GIFT  OF 
JEROME  B.  HANDHELD 


WAR 


AND   ITS   ALLEGED  BENEFITS 

By 
J.    NOVICOW 


i\ 


Vice-President  of  the  Internationa]  Institute  of  Sociology 

Translated  by 
THOMAS    SELTZER 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY   HOLT   AND    COMPANY 
1911 


Copyright,  191  x, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Published.  February,  1911 


/ 


J^Y{ 


OiAC 


1)10 


55 


-w£/%  Q*t*v*<c  /?„  <£u^cJ*ie0$ 


THE    QUINN    &    BODEN    CO.   PRESS 
HAHWAY,    N.   J. 


Hi 


INTRODUCTION 

War  has  its  very  convinced  advocates,  who 
attribute  numerous  benefits  to  it.  The  opin- 
ions of  the  apologists  of  brute  force  should 
be  examined  with  the  utmost  care.  They 
should  be  combated  with  an  energy  pro- 
portional to  the  evils  they  produce. 

We  shall  consider  these  opinions  one  by 
one  to  show  how  little  they  can  withstand 
criticism,  how  they  fall  not  only  before  sound 
reasoning,  but  even  before  the  mere  say-so 
of  ordinary  common  sense. 


M275271 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I 


I.  War  an  End  in  Itself 

II.  One-sided  Reasoning    . 

III.  War  a  Solution    . 

IV.  Physiological  Effects 
V.  Economic  Effects 

VI.  Political  Effects 

VII.  Intellectual  Effects 

VIII.  Moral  Effects 


IX.    Survivals,  Routine  Ideas,  and  Sophistries      75 


X.    The  Psychology  of  War    . 

XI.     War  Considered  as  the  Sole    Form    of 
Struggle    


XII.     The  Theorists  of  Brute  Force 
XIII.     Antagonism  and  Solidarity 


7 

13 
20 

31 

37 
48 
60 


89 

102 
112 
122 


CHAPTER  I 

WAR  AN  END  IN  ITSELF 

A  German  author,  Max  Jahns,  in  a  work 
ardently  apologizing  for  war,1  says:  "  War 
regenerates  corrupted  peoples,  it  awakens 
dormant  nations,  it  rouses  self-forgetful,  self- 
abandoned  races  from  their  mortal  languor. 
In  all  times  war  has  been  an  essential  factor 
in  civilization.  It  has  exercised  a  happy  in- 
fluence upon  customs,  arts,  and  science. " 2 
Some  French  authors  hold  the  same  views. 
At  bottom,  G.  Valbert  agrees  with  Max 
Jahns,  and  the  great  Ernest  Renan  says 
somewhere:  "  Let  us  cling  with  love  to  our 
custom  of  fighting  from  time  to  time,  because 

1Ueber  Krieg,  Frieden  und  Kultur,  Berlin,   1893. 
2  G.  Valbert  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  April  1, 
1894,  p.  695. 


2  WAR  AN  END  IN  ITSELF 

war  is  the  necessary  occasion  and  place  for 
manifesting  moral  force."  x 

Another  writer,  Dr.  Le  Bon,  says :  "  One  of 
the  chief  conditions  for  the  upliftment  of  an 
enfeebled  nation  is  the  organization  of  a  very 
strong  military  force.     It  must  always  hold 

{   up  the  threat  of  a  disastrous  war."2 

According  to  these  authors,  war  has  bene- 
ficial results.  If  war  should  be  suppressed, 
those  benefits  would  likewise  disappear.  War, 
then,  is  an  end  in  itself. 

.Now,  here  we  have  the  great,  fundamental 
error  from  which  innumerable  other  fallacies 

/  logically  proceed.  War  never  has  been  an 
end,  whether  for  animals  or  man.  Since  liv- 
ing beings  have  peopled  our  sphere,  they  have 
killed  one  another  without  cease,  every  hour, 
every  minute,  every  second.  But  massacre 
has  always  been  a  means,  not  an  end.  When 
a  lion  strangles  a  deer,  he  does  so  for  the 
sake  of  food.    When  he  is  satiated,  he  sleeps 

1  Quoted  by  P.  Lacombe,  De  Vhistoire  consideree 
comme   science,  Paris,    Hachette,   1894,   p.   83. 

2  Les  lots  psychologiques  de  revolution  des  peuples, 
Paris,  F.  Alcan,  1894,  P-  I^o, 


WAR  AN  END  IN  ITSELF  3 

stretched  in  the  sun.  A  hunter  shoots  birds 
that  make  a  good  dish.  He  disdains  others, 
even  if  they  come  within  reach  of  his  gun. 
To  waste  his  cartridges  on  them  is  to  lose 
time  and  money. 

Since  the  remotest  periods  men  went  to 
war  only  with  some  particular  object  in  view. 
The  goal  striven  for  by  every  human  being 
is  enjoyment.  If  the  death  of  one  of  his 
kind  can  procure  him  that,  he  will  sacrifice 
him  without  pity.1 1  But  if  such  is  not  the 
case,  he  will  not  take  the  trouble  to  kill  him, 
since  purposeless  work  is  the  worst  suffering. 

War  is  carried  on  from  one  of  the  follow- 
ing motives :  to  kill  one's  fellow-men  for  the 
sake  of  using  them  as  food;  to  deprive  them 
of  their  women;  to  obtain  booty  from  them;2 
to  impose  a  religion,  certain  ideas,  or  a  type 
of  culture  upon  them.  , 

If  a  territory  does  not  supply  enough  ani- 

1  Thus,  Napoleon  I  caused  two  million  Frenchmen  to 
be  massacred  in  order  in  a  degree  to  satisfy  his  self- 
love. 

2  The  German  word  for  war,  Krieg,  is  derived  from 
the  word  kriegen,  which  means  to  take,  to  carry  off, 


^  _, 


4  WAR  AN  END  IN  ITSELF 

mal  food,  war  is  sometimes  made  to  take 
prisoners  and  eat  them. 

As  for  the  rape  of  women,  it  is  now  a  very 
infrequent  practice,  and  I  need  not  dwell 
upon  it. 

Wars  undertaken  to  obtain  chattels  have 
been,  and  still  are,  rather  general.  But  the 
practice  of  redemption  proves  that  in  this 
case,  as  in  all  others,  fighting  is  solely  a 
means.  Often  to  keep  from  being  pillaged, 
certain  nations  consented  to  pay  a  tribute.  If 
the  sum  seemed  sufficient  to  the  aggressors, 
they  accepted  it,  well  content  not  to  have  to 
go  to  battle. 

Caesar  invaded  Gaul.  His  aim  was  to 
make  himself  master  of  that  country  for  the 
sake  of  a  number  of  advantages,  which  it 
would  take  too  long  to  enumerate  here.  It 
was  a  severe  war.  But  if  the  Gauls  had  sub- 
mitted at  once,  Caesar  would  not  have  taken 
the  trouble  to  go  on  a  single  campaign  or 
kill  a  single  man. 

In  the  sixteenth  century  the  Flemings  em- 
braced Protestantism.     Philip  II  wanted  to 


WAR  AN  END  IN  ITSELF  5 

force  them  to  become  Catholics  again.  If 
at  the  first  threat  from  the  king  of  Spain 
the  Flemings  had  returned  to  the  religion  of 
their  ancestors,  Philip  would ,  not  have  sent 
a  single  soldier  to  the  Netherlands. 

The  Austrian  government  centralized  all 
the  provinces  of  its  empire.  That  offended 
the  nationalism  of  the  Magyars.  If  when 
Francis  Joseph  ascended  the  throne  he  had 
consented  to  grant  their  wishes,  they  would 
not  have  gone  to  war  in  1848. 

I  have  heard  the  following  opinion  ex- 
pressed: "At  this  time  retrogressive  ideas 
are  triumphing.  If  that  continues,  Europe 
is  lost.  A  general  war  is  needed  to  set  us 
on  a  better  path.  The  conquered  nations 
will  be  obliged  to  mend  their  ways.  Enlight- 
ened by  defeat,  they  will  reform  their  ancient 
institutions.  The  conquerors  will  of  neces- 
sity do  the  same,  and  liberalism  will  carry  the 
day."  The  person  who  so  expressed  himself 
was  ready  to  see  a  million  men  sacrificed  (a 
general  war  in  Europe  would  result  in  that 
number  of  victims  at  the  very  least)  for  the 


6  WAR  AN  END  IN  ITSELF 

triumph  of  his  ideas.  A  rather  cruel  method 
of  propaganda,  it  must  be  admitted,  but  here, 
as  in  every  other  case,  carnage  is  a  means,  not 
an  end. ) 

Thus,  the  object  of  war  has  been  in  turn, 
cannibalism,  spoliation,  intolerance,  and  des- 
potism; none  of  which  have  ever  been  held 
to  be  beneficial.  Then,  how  the  means  by 
which  those  objects  have  been  attained,  that 
is,  war,  can  be  beneficial,  is  an  incomprehensi- 
ble mystery. 

As  we  now  see,  all  we  need  do  is  abandon 
nebulous  metaphysics  and  take  our  stand  for 
an  instant  on  the  ground  of  concrete  reali- 
ties to  see  all  the  alleged  benefits  of  war  van- 
ish away  like  smoke. 

War  might  be  an  end  in  itself,  it  might 
produce  results  favorable  to  mankind,  but 
that  only  if  suffering  and  death  were  enjoy- 
able.   And  everybody  knows  they  are  not. 


/ 


CHAPTER  II 
ONE-SIDED  REASONING 

Those  who  attribute  moral  benefits  to  war 
are  guilty  of  an  astonishing  fallacy.  They 
think  merely  of  defense,  never  of  attack. 
(  "  It  is  necessary  to  overcome  some  repug- 
nance, "  says  Sismondi,1  "  to  venture  to  say 
that  war  is  necessary  to  humanity,  that  even 
those  private  battles  called  duels  preserve 
some  of  our  virtues.  Nevertheless,  we  have 
seen  that  when  nations  renowned  of  old  for 
their  valor  have  been  freed  from  all  danger, 
when  they  have  been  forbidden  the  use  of 
arms,  when  they  have  lost  that  standard  of 
honor  which  makes  them  brave  death — we 
have  seen  them  lose,  along  with  their  military 
courage,  the  very  strength  that  keeps  up  the 
domestic  virtues.     We  have  seen  them  de- 

1  Histoires    des    republigues    italiennes,    Paris,    Fume, 
1840,  vol.  ii,  p.   172. 

7 


1/ 


8  ONE-SIDED  REASONING 

based  in  peace  by  the  very  cause  that  exposed 
them  to  defeat.  And  we  have  convinced  our- 
selves that  to  be  worthy  to  live  man  must 
learn  to  brave  danger  and  death. 'V 

These  words  are  typical.  Without  doubt, 
to  defend  one's  rights  at  peril  of  death  is 
a  most  generous  deed;  without  doubt,  the 
communities  unwilling  to  bring  themselves  to 
do  so  soon  fall  into  the  lowest  state  of  degra- 
dation ;  only — we  forget  the  other  side  of  the 
question.  That  the  A's  should  be  obliged  to 
defend  their  rights  with  their  lives,  there 
must  perforce  be  B's  who  violate  those  rights 
also  at  the  risk  of  their  lives.  Defense  neces- 
sarily involves  attack. 

Another  example :  "  Max  Jahns  finds  noth- 
ing to  say  against  wars  of  expansion,  but  the 
wars  that  he  prefers  to  all  others  are  those 
waged  in  self-defense.  They  are  the  noblest 
and  most  glorious."  x ' 

Mr.  Jahns's  blindness  is  truly  surprising. 
How  is  a  defensive  war  possible  without  an 
offensive  war?    The  weakest  house  of  cards 

1  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  loc.  cit.,  p.  693. 


ONE-SIDED  REASONING  9 

will  not  fall  unless  it  is  blown  upon.  The 
timidest  man  in  the  world  can  live  in  tran- 
quillity if  nobody  violates  his  rights;  in  other 
words,  if  nobody  attacks  him. 

Mr.  Jahns's  book  contains  another  pearl 
of  one-sided  reasoning.  He  justifies  war  on 
the  ground  that  it  is  a  right.  He  says,  "  The 
first  and  most  evident  right  of  all  is  the  right 
to  live."  *  Assuredly.  But  it  is  not  the  right 
to  kill.  Now,  without  murderers,  there  never 
would  be  any  murdered. 

We  see  some  races  fallen  into  deep  de- 
basement; the  Bengalis,  for  instance.  Since 
time  immemorial  they  have  submitted  to  con- 
quest without  the  faintest  protest.  Who- 
ever the  invader  that  possessed  himself  of 
their  country,  they  obeyed  him  without  offer- 
ing resistance.  The  degradation  of  the  Ben- 
galis is  heartrending.  They  utterly  lack 
virile  energy.  They  are  fawners,  liars, 
cheats;  in  a  word,  the  scum  of  humanity. 

The  Bengalis  are  said  to  have  fallen  so 
low  because  they  never  knew  how  to  conduct 

1  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  loc.  cit.,  p.  699. 


io  ONE-SIDED  REASONING 

war  and  defend  their  country.  Nobody  re- 
flects that  the  Bengalis  fell  so  low  because 
other  people  attacked  them  and  made  war 
upon  them,  though  that  is  the  correct  way  of 
viewing  the  question.  Suppose  Bengal  had 
never  been  invaded  by  a  number  of  crowned 
brigands  bearing  the  pompous  name  of  con- 
querors; suppose  the  inhabitants  of  Bengal 
had  never  been  obliged  by  the  knife  at  their 
throat  to  give  up  nine-tenths  of  their  rev- 
enues to  the  aggressors;  suppose  their  rights 
had  never  been  violated  and  they  had  not 
been  tyrannized  over  in  the  most  infamous 
fashion.  They  would  have  held  their  heads 
higher;  they  would  have  been  proud  and  dig- 
nified, and  perhaps  might  have  taken  for 
their  motto,  Dieu  et  mon  droit.  If  nobody 
had  oppressed  the  Bengalis,  there  would  have 
been  no  need  for  them  to  resort  to  lying, 
cheating,  fawning.  Man  acquires  those  vices 
because  he  thinks  them  profitable.  In  a  coun- 
try in  which  all  rights  are  respected  nobody 
is  tempted  to  commit  base  deeds,  which  are 
absolutely  useless  and  always  troublesome. 


ONE-SIDED  REASONING  n 

Why  did  the  Bengalis  become  the  scum  of 
humanity?  Because  they  were  unable  to  de- 
fend themselves,  say  the  short-sighted  who 
think  by  rote.  Not  at  all.  It  is  because  they 
were  attacked.  That  is  the  first  and  fore- 
most reason. 

It  is  only  by  the  fallacy  of  one-sided  rea-  ^ 
soning  that  moral  benefits  can  be  attributed 
to  war. 

When  within  a  civil  community  one  man 
makes  an  attempt  upon  the  rights  of  an- 
other, our  sympathies  go  to  the  victim,  our 
hatred  and  contempt  to  the  aggressor.  X 
tried  to  murder  Y.  Y  is  wounded.  We  take 
care  of  him,  we  show  the  greatest  solicitude 
on  his  behalf.  As  for  X,  society  places  its 
ban  upon  him.  He  is  a  criminal.  Every 
honorable  man  is  ashamed  to  associate  with 
him.  He  is  condemned  and  put  to  death. 
But  our  morals  take  a  sudden  turn  when  in- 
ternational relations  enter  into  the  question. 
By  the  strangest  aberration,  all  our  sympathy 
and  admiration  go  to  the  one  that  trans- 
gresses the  rights  of  his  fellow-creatures,  to 


12  ONE-SIDED  REASONING 

the  glorious  conqueror.  Our  hatred  and  con- 
tempt go  to  the  victims.  But  for  the  suc- 
cession of  brigands  that  invaded  Bengal,  the 
people  of  that  country  would  never  have 
taken  on  their  present  vices.  Strange — we 
scorn  the  unfortunate  corrupt,  but  not  the 
vicious  corrupters. 

In  short,  to  risk  one's  life  in  defending 
one's  rights,  to  prefer  death  to  disgrace,  is 
great,  beautiful,  generous.  But  it  is  base  and 
vile  to  violate  the  rights  of  others,  to  steal, 
pillage,  despoil,  and  tyrannize  over  people's 
consciences.  Now,  every  aggressor  of  neces- 
sity commits  those  misdeeds.  Since  there  can 
be  no  war  without  an  aggressor,  war  is  one 
of  the  principal  causes  of  the  degradation 
of  the  human  race,  i 


CHAPTER  III 

WAR  A  SOLUTION 

Some  years  ago  the  world's  disarmament 
was  being  discussed.  The  king  of  Denmark 
expressed  himself  emphatically  in  favor  of 
it.  The  Moscow  Gazette,1  commenting  upon 
his  opinion,  said:  "  Is  disarmament  possible? 
We  think  not.  Too  much  gall  has  gathered 
among  the  European  nations.  ...  War  is  ^ 
the  one  method  of  deciding  international 
questions."  At  the  western  end  of  the  con- 
tinent in  Paris,  the  ville-lumiere,  the  very 
same  view  finds  expression.  "A  secret  in- 
stinct informs  people,"  says  Mr.  Valbert, 
"  that  gross  evils  require  gross  remedies,  and 
great  crises,  violent  solutions,  that  the  word 
does  not  always  work  miracles,  that  force  has 
its  role  to  play  in  human  affairs,  that  in  the 

1  March   30  or   31,    1894. 
13 


i4  WAR  A  SOLUTION 

long  run  certain  evils  become  intolerable,  that 
an  end  must  be  made  of  those  evils  at  all 
costs,  and  that  an  end  cannot  be  made  of 
them  except  by  war."  l 

It  is  difficult  to  decide  what  is  more  re- 
volting in  these  sentiments,  their  cold  cru- 
elty or  their  illogicality. 

The  Moscow  Gazette  cites  facts  in  sup- 
port of  its  opinions.  "  From  the  year  1496 
B.C.  to  1861  A.D.,  in  3,358  years,  there  were 
227  years  of  peace  and  3,130  years  of  war, 
or  thirteen  years  of  war  to  every  year  of 
peace.  Within  the  last  three  centuries  there 
have  been  286  wars  in  Europe.,,  And  Mr. 
Valbert  says:  "  From  the  year  1500  B.C.  to 
i860  a.d.  more  than  8,000  treaties  of  peace 
meant  to  remain  in  force  forever  were  con- 
cluded. The  average  time  they  remained  in 
force  is  two  years."  2 

I  put  this  categoric  question  to  the  advo- 
cates of  war:  "  If  war  is  able  to  decide  dif- 
ferences, how  is  it  that  8,000  wars  have  set- 

1  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  loc.  c\t.s  p.  696. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  692. 


WAR  A  SOLUTION  15 

tied  nothing,  and  that  in  this  year  of  our 
Lord  we  feel  the  necessity  for  the  eight  thou- 
sand and  first  war?  If  more  than  8,000 
wars  have  settled  nothing,  what  probability 
is  there  that  the  eight  thousand  and  first 
as  if  by  magic,  will  suddenly  decide  all 
questions  in  dispute?  By  what  surprising 
change,  by  what  incomprehensible  miracle 
will  that  eight  thousand  and  first  war  possess 
such  extraordinary  virtues?  "  I  should  really 
like  an  explanation.  It  is  worth  the  while 
to  try  to  get  one. 

The  illogicality  of  these  backward  think- 
ers is  as  prodigious  in  each  particular  case  as 
in  the  general  question.  In  France  one  con- 
stantly hears:  "  War  is  the  only  solution  of 
the  Alsace-Lorraine  question. "  If  that  is  so, 
why  did  not  the  war  of  1870  solve  it?  Now, 
if  the  war  of  1870  did  not  solve  the  Alsace- 
Lorraine  question,  then  war  cannot  solve  that 
or  any  other  question.  Indeed,  let  the  Ger- 
mans be  completely  defeated  and  the  situa- 
tion will  remain  the  same  as  in  1871.  The 
Germans  would  then  have  lost  a  province 


16  WAR  A  SOLUTION 

which  in  their  opinion  was  "  flesh  of  their 
flesh  and  bone  of  their  bone."  They  would 
forge  new  weapons  and  await  a  favorable  op- 
portunity for  recapturing  Alsace-Lorraine,  as 
they  have  done  since  1648.  Where  would 
the  solution  be? 

In  1 87 1  the  Germans  thought  they  had 
settled  their  differences  with  their  neighbors 
on  the  west.  By  levying  the  indemnity  of 
five  milliards  of  francs  they  thought  they  had 
drained  France  of  her  last  drop  of  blood. 
Napoleon  I  also  thought  he  had  done  with 
Prussia  after  the  battle  of  Jena,  when  he  took 
half  its  territory  and  reduced  its  army  to 
40,000  men.  Vain  illusions  of  rou- 
tine thinking,  chimeras  of  human  blindness! 
We  might  as  well  make  up  our  minds  that 
it  will  be  just  as  ineffectual  in  the  future  as 
it  has  been  in  the  past,  to  "  drain  a  country 
of  its  last  drop."  \ 

Speaking  of  the  factions  in  the  Italian 
cities  in  the  middle  ages,  Massimo  d'Azeglio 
says:  "  Each  time  a  party  came  into  power, 
it  foolishly  thought  it  could  keep  its  position 


WAR  A  SOLUTION  17 

by  unjust  and  violent  methods.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  injustice  and  violence  were  the  very 
causes  that  prevented  any  party  from  remain- 
ing in  power  for  a  length  of  time."  1 

The  same  is  true  of  international  ques- 
tions. They  will  never  be  decided  so  long 
as  violence  is  resorted  to;  that  is  to  say,  so 
long  as  wars  are  carried  on.  The  past  is  a 
guarantee  of  the  future.  If  8,000  wars  have 
produced  no  result,  one  must  be  utterly  de- 
void of  reason  to  think  that  battles  are  a 
means  of  deciding  international  differences. 

A  question  is  decided  only  if  it  is  adjusted 
in  a  way  that  the  contending  parties  consider 
equitable.  For  example,  when  the  English 
took  Canada,  they  wanted  to  impose  their 
language  upon  the  French  there.  They  used 
the  most  brutal  means.2  The  armed  revolt, 
in  other  words,  the  war,  ended  in  a  final  out- 
burst in  1857.    It  was  followed  by  the  mili- 

1  Niccolo  dey  Lapi,  Florence,  le  Monnier,  1866,  p.  63. 

2  One  of  the  most  horrible  chapters  in  the  history  of 
England  is  the  expulsion  of  the  unhappy  French  Aca- 
diens,  which  has  remained  in  the  memory  of  the  people 
as  the  grand  derangement. 


1 8  WAR  A  SOLUTION 

tary  repression  of  the  gallows.  But  soon  Eng- 
land abandoned  that  absurd,  superannuated 
policy.  It  gave  up  its  efforts  to  denationalize 
the  Canadians,  realizing  that  they  had  the 
right  to  be  French,  and  it  established  in 
America  an  order  of  things  just  and  equitable 
to  all.  Thus,  at  the  banquet  of  Athe  Alliance 
franqaise  held  on  April  16,  1891,  Mercier, 
governor  of  the  province  of  Quebec,  could 
say  with  truth :  "  Now  our  liberties  are  as- 
sured by  a  wise,  generous  constitution,  under 
the  enlightened  direction  of  the  statesmen  of 
England.  Our  struggles  are  over."  l  Re- 
spect for  others'  rights,  justice,  mutual  con- 
cessions, these  are  the  means  of  settling  dis- 
putes. Bloodshed  never  will  succeed.  Since 
the  beginning  of  history  wholesale  murder 
has  been  committed  thousands  and  thousands 
of  times  without  solving  anything.  It  will  be 
committed  thousands  and  thousands  of  times 
again  without  yielding  a  better  result.  Each 
war  merely  sows  the  seed  of  a  future  war. 

1  Bulletin  de  V Alliance  Frangaise,  April-June,  1891,  p. 
43' 


WAR  A  SOLUTION  19 

One  thing  about  wars  deceives  us.  After 
frightful  carnage,  the  belligerents  are  some- 
times exhausted.  They  long  for  tranquillity, 
and  they  appoint  plenipotentiaries  to  settle 
their  differences.  Since  each  side  desires  a 
cessation  of  hostilities,  each  makes  mutual 
concessions.  An  adjustment  is  reached  and  a 
modus  vivendi  is  found  equally  acceptable  to 
all  the  parties  involved.  It  is  this  good  will, 
this  feeling  for  justice  that  leads  to  solutions, 
it  is  not  the  hecatombs,  it  is  not  the  war  pre- 
ceding. If  the  same  spirit  of  concord 
had  been  displayed  beforehand,  an  agree- 
ment would  undoubtedly  have  been  reached. 
But  since  the  establishment  of  a  more 
or  less  equitable  order  of  things  as- 
suring justice  and  peace  too  often  fol- 
lows, the  bloodiest  wars,  the  mind  is  mis- 
led by  a  false  association  of  ideas.  The  regu- 
lation of  international  differences  is  attributed 
to  the  war,  whereas,  on  the  contrary,  it  is 
due  solely  to  respect  for  the  rights  of  others, 
to  the  spirit  of  equity,  to  good  will,  and  mu- 
tual concessions. 


CHAPTER  IV 
PHYSIOLOGICAL  EFFECTS 

One  of  the  principal  benefits  attributed  to 
war  is  that  it  operates  for  a  selection  fa- 
vorable to  the  species.  War,  it  is  alleged, 
eliminates  the  degenerate  races,  assures  the 
empire  of  the  earth  to  vigorous,  well-endowed 
races,  and  so  constantly  improves  mankind. 

There  are  few  more  egregious  errors.  It 
is  easy  to  show  that  the  selection  resulting 
from  war  has  always  been  the  very  reverse. 
It  has  invariably  eliminated  individuals 
physiologically  the  most  perfect,  and  has  al- 
lowed the  weakest  to  survive.  War  has  not 
hastened  mankind's  improvement,  but  re- 
tarded it.  Improvement  has  taken  place  not 
as  a  result  of,  but  in  spite  of,  war. 

Since  the  most  ancient  times  men  of  the 
soundest    constitutions,    the    most    vigorous 

20 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  EFFECTS  21 

men,  have  gone  off  to  fight.  The  weak,  the 
sick,  the  deformed  have  remained  at  home. 
So,  every  battle  carried  away  some  of  the 
select,  leaving  behind  the  socially  unpro- 
ductive. Besides,  in  the  army  itself  there 
are  brave  men  and  cowards.  The  brave  are 
certainly  the  more  perfect  physiologically. 
Since  they  go  to  the  front,  more  of  them  fall. 
Thus  a  second  selection  is  added  to  the  first 
to  contribute  to  the  elimination  of  the  phys- 
ically superior. 

It  is  said  that  in  savage  times  war  was 
carried  on  between  the  tribes  without  pity. 
The  victors  killed  off  the  defeated  to  the  very 
last  man,  and  married  the  women.  In  that 
way  a  cross-breeding  favorable  to  the  race 
took  place.  That  would  be  true  but  for  one 
condition,  if  there  had  been  no  killed  among 
the  victors;  which,  we  know  from  history, 
never  was  the  case.  Certain  encounters  were 
so  desperate  that  the  number  of  killed  on 
each  side  was  equal;  sometimes,  in  fact, 
greater  on  the  side  of  those  that  remained 
masters  of  the  field.     Hence  the  number  of 


22  PHYSIOLOGICAL  EFFECTS 

handsome  men  who  could  win  women  was 
less  after  a  battle  than  before.  War,  there- 
fore, has  always  produced  a  selection  for 
the  worse  instead  of  for  the  better. 

Besides,  to  kill  all  the  defeated  was  impos- 
sible. A  number  saved  themselves  by  flight. 
And  soon  the  victors,  instead  of  killing  the 
vanquished  people,  reduced  them  to  slavery. 
The  slaves  married  and  brought  forth  chil- 
dren. War,  after  eliminating  the  braver, 
permitted  the  weaker  to  live.  It  did  not 
bring  about  a  favorable  selection. 

In  our  days  the  conquerors  do  not  marry 
the  wives  of  the  conquered.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  hatred  excited  by  conflicts  prevents 
marriage  between  the  belligerents.  The  num- 
ber of  marriages  between  Frenchmen  and 
Germans  is  certainly  less  since  1870  than 
before.  Thus,  the  alleged  benefit  attrib- 
uted to  war  in  the  period  of  savagery  is 
entirely  absent  in  the  period  of  civiliza- 
tion. 

"The  stronger,  the  healthier,  the  more 
normally  constituted  a  young  man  is,"  says 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  EFFECTS  23 

Ernst  Haeckel,1  "  the  more  likely  he  is  to  be 
killed  by  rifles,  cannons,  and  similar  engines 
of  civilization. "  The  recruiting  officers  are 
pitiless.  If  a  young  man  has  the  least  phys- 
ical defect,  even  so  slight  a  thing  as  bad  teeth 
or  poor  sight,  they  reject  him.  The  very 
flower  of  each  generation  are  chosen  for  the 
butcheries.  Wherein  lies  the  favorable  selec- 
tion here?  One  must  be  quite  prejudiced  to 
maintain  that  war  nowadays  improves  the 
race. 

Napoleon  caused  the  killing  of  3,700,000 
men.  Who  dares  assert  that  those  men  had 
the  poorest  constitutions?  Everybody  knows 
they  were  the  pick  of  Europe.  After  the 
Paraguayan  war  "  the  virile  population  dis- 
appeared almost  completely.  None  remained 
but  the  sick  and  the  disabled."  2  Would  it  be 
right  to  say  that  such  a  condition  improved 
the  Paraguayan  race? 

One  more  point.     In  man  the  procreative 

1  Natiirltche     Schopfungsgeschichte,     4th     ed.,     Berlin, 

1873,  P.  154. 

2  E.  Reclus,  Nowvelle  geographie  universelle,  vol.  xix, 
p.  503. 


\ 


24  PHYSIOLOGICAL  EFFECTS 

passion  reaches  its  culmination  during  the 
very  years  he  spends  in  the  barracks.  Surely 
no  one  would  say  that  the  soldier  in  the  army 
has  the  same  opportunity  for  bringing  forth 
children  as  the  citizen  at  home.  As  a  result, 
at  the  very  time  when  the  select  in  a  gen- 
eration desire  the  most  strongly  to  insure 
progeny,  they  are  prevented  from  doing  so. 
Those  whom  the  recruiting  officers  reject,  on 
the  contrary,  have  every  opportunity  to 
propagate  their  kind.  Their  offspring  be- 
come more  and  more  numerous,  and  through 
militarism  the  races  tend  to  degenerate  not 
only  in  times  of  war,  but  even  in  times  of 
absolute  peace. 

Other  factors  counteract  and,  in  a  large 
degree,  weaken  the  disastrous  effects  of  war. 
That  is  why  we  do  not  see  the  process  of 
degeneration  in  its  general  outline. 

If  wars  perfect  the  races,  then  the  most  bel- 
ligerent nations  should  be  the  handsomest. 
But  such  is  not  the  case.  In  fact,  the  con- 
trary is  true.  The  English  are  most  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  handsomest  people  on  earth. 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  EFFECTS         25 

They  are  also  the  least  warlike,  since  they 
alone,  of  all  the  European  nations,  have  abol- 
ished compulsory  military  service. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  athletic  exercise, 
sports  of  all  kinds,  contribute  to  the  improve- 
ment of  the  animal  man.  They  give  strength 
to  the  muscles  and  suppleness  to  the  body,  and 
develop  energy  and  endurance.  In  short, 
they  tend  to  perfect  the  individual  physio- 
logically. Now,  in  our  days,  a  strange  phe- 
nomenon may  be  observed.  The  practice  of 
athletics  may  be  said  to  be  in  inverse  ratio 
to  militarism.  In  England  sports  are  car- 
ried on  on  an  immense  scale — the  boat  races 
between  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  crews 
are  a  national  event — less  so  in  the  western 
countries  of  the  European  continent,  and  al- 
most not  at  all  in  Russia.  When  physical 
exercise  has  been  imposed  upon  a  young  man 
by  the  brutal  officer-teachers  of  our  modern 
armies,  it  inspires  a  disgust  which  clings  to 
him  the  rest  of  his  life. 

So  we  see  that  from  a  physiological  point 
of  view  war  has  never  contributed  to  the  im- 


26  PHYSIOLOGICAL  EFFECTS 

provement  of  the  human  race.  It  has  always 
had  the  opposite  tendency.  If,  nevertheless, 
improvement  has  taken  place,  it  was  pro- 
duced, not  thanks  to,  but  in  spite  of,  war.  The 
principal  factors  of  improvement  are  love 
and  death. 

The  handsomest  men  and  women  are  most 
likely  to  excite  sexual  passion,  the  ugly  and 
deformed  less  soy  FVom  this  proceeds  a  fa- 
vorable selection.  \  In  addition,  the  incapable 
are  thrown  bajbk  mto  the  lower  classes  of 
society.  \  Upon  them  are  imposed  the  hard- 
est, the  tnost  dangerous,  and  the  least  re- 
munerative work.  Since  they  have  less  com- 
fort, mortality  among  them  is  greater  than 
among  those  who  are  better  off.  These  two 
factors  constantly  operate  to  eliminate  the 
physically  inferior.  The  limited  extent  of  the 
present  book  prevents  me  from  enlarging  upon 
this  point.  I  will  write  of  it  in  detail  in  a 
special  work. 

J*     **  * 

» 


CHAPTER  V 
ECONOMIC  EFFECTS 

The  greater  number  of  wars  have  arisen 

from  a  desire  to  appropriate  the  wealth  of 

—— —^ 

others.  Expeditions  were  conducted  for  ob- 
taining  chattels^  then  for  obtaining  land,  fi- 
nally for  obtaining  the  jgroeeecU  from  taxes 
levied  upon  entire  nations.  (The  idea  that 
we  can  enrich  ourselves  more  speedily  by 
seizing  the  possessions  of  our  neighbors  than 
by  working  ourselves  is  one  of  the  notions 
most  deeply  embedded  in  the  human  mindi 
It  is  so  persistent  that  in  our  own  days  it  is 
accepted  even  by  highly  distinguished  econo- 
mists. "  Since  men  are  unequal  in  strength," 
says  Mr.  de  Molinari,1  "  the  stronger 
can  seize  upon  the  product  of  the  weaker 
men's  work  with  less  expenditure  of  labor 

1  Science  et  religion,  Paris,  Guillaumin,   1894,  p.   17. 

27 


28  ECONOMIC  EFFECTS 

and  energy  than  they  would  have  to  employ 
if  they  themselves  were  to  produce. "  This 
has  never  been  so,  or,  rather,  it  has  been  so 
in  appearance,  but  not  in  reality.  War  has 
always  cost  more  effort  than  has  direct  pro- 
duction. Besides,  the  trouble  connected  with 
it  easily  vies  with  the  nuisance  of  working. 
(The  profession  of  a  soldier  involving  danger, 
suffering,  and  fatigue,  clearly,  is  one  of  the 
hardest  professions.  So,  since  ancient  times, 
it  has  been  held  in  horror  by  all  men.  As  coon 
as  a  man  could  get  out  of  performing  military 
service  he  did  so.  Often  nowadays  people 
mutilate  themselves  in  order  not  to  have  to 
become  soldiers.  Do  we  ever  see  a  man  cut 
off  a  finger  that  he  should  not  have  to  be  a 
locksmith,  or  a  mason,  or  an  engineer,  or 
a  painter?  Those  trades  and  nearly  all  oth- 
ers, we  may  then  infer,  are  considered  pleas- 
anter  than  the  soldiering  profession. 

But  the  annoyances  produced  by  war  do 
not  stop  with  the  cessation  of  hostilities.  The 
dajLafter  the  victory  is  harder,  perhaps,  than 
the  day  of  battle.    Of  old,  one  of  the  great- 


ECONOMIC  EFFECTS  29 

est  advantages  attached  to  ronquest  seemed 
to  be  the  possibility  of  making  slaves.  Then, 
thanks  to  the  labor  of  the  vanquished,  the 
master  could  live  in  idleness  and  pomp. 
What,  ostensibly,  could  be  pleasanter?  But 
the  reality  was  entirely  different.  In  the  first 
place,  slave  laboris.less  productive  than  free 
labon  Experience  a  thousand  times  repeated 
has  proved  that  countries  into  which  slavery 
has  been  introduced  do  not  prosper  so  well 
as  countries  employing  free  labor.  Our  en- 
joyment comes  in  the  largest  measure  from 
public  wealth,  that  is,  from  the  general  wealth 
of  the  country.  Therefore,  if  the  general 
wealth  increases  less  quickly,  we  suffer  per- 
sonal damage.  But  more  than  that.  A 
slave-master  can  do  nothing  all  day,  and  his 
life  is  none  the  pleasanter  on  that  account. 
The  harder  the  work  he  imposes,  the  more 
hate  and  resentment  he  inspires.  Oppression 
provokes  private  revenge  and  general  re- 
volts. From  Pliny's  letters  we  know  that  the 
great  Roman  lords,  even  those  who  treated 
their  slaves  humanely,  lived  in  perpetual  ter- 


30  ECONOMIC  EFFECTS 

ror  of  their  lives.  At  any  moment,  they 
feared,  they  might  be  assassinated.  The 
same  condition  prevailed  in  Russia  in  slave 
times.  Often  when  proprietors  went  on  an 
excursion  in  the  country,  they  had  to  take  an 
escort  along  to  guard  them  against  their 
peasants.  Such  an  existence,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, can  have  little  delight.  The  feudal 
lords  of  the  middle  ages  were  no  more  fortu- 
nate.  They  lived  in  constant  warfare  and 
despoiled  their  neighbors  with  the  most 
charming  unrestraint.  But,  alas !  their  lives 
were  none  the  gayer  for  that.  They  were 
compelled  to  shut  themselves  up  in  strong 
castles,  which  to  us  seem  veritable  dungeons. 
When  they  sallied  forth  they  had  to  be  ac- 
companied by  an  armed  guard.  They  were 
exposed  to  the  constant  threat  of  assault  and 
death.  In  my  opinion,  I  confess,  there  must 
have  been  slight  enjoyment  in  an  existence 
of  that  sort.  Nowadays  a  man  would  deem 
himself  profoundly  miserable  to  live  in  the 
same  circumstances.  Think  of  what  a  night- 
mare it  must  have  been  not  to  be  able  to  cross 


ECONOMIC  EFFECTS  31 

the  threshold  of  one's  home  without  seeing 
death  lift  its  head  and  stalk  before. 

Wealth  13  nothing  but  a  means,  enjoyment 
the  end.  But,  as  we  see,  even  if  by  war  we 
can  get  possession  of  the  wealth  of  others 
"  with  the  least  expenditure  of  labor  and  en- 
ergy," we  thereby  obtain  only  a  moderate 
amount  of  enjoyment. 

But  the  very  assumption  that  by  war  we 
wrest  wealth  with  the  least  expenditure  of 
effort  will  not  stand  criticism. 

Every  enterprise  presupposes  an  outlay;  in 
other  words,  capital.  Capital  represents  ac- 
cumulated work.  If  $20,000  are  invested  in 
a  factory,  it  means  that  previously  men 
worked  a  sufficient  number  of  hours  to  earn 
that  amount  of  money,  which  they  saved  and 
employed  in  the  new  undertaking.  If  the 
capital  needed  for  the  factory  is  $10,000, 
instead  of  $20,000,  the  smaller  sum  repre- 
sents the  work  of  half  the  number  of  hours. 

Now,  it  is  easy  to  prove  that  the  jcapital 
used  in  military  enterprises  always  has  been 
greater  than  the  capital  for  other  enterprises. 


32  ECONOMIC  EFFECTS 

The  more  firmly  men  believed  that  war  could 
enrich  with  "  the  least  expenditure  of  labor 
and  energy,"  the  more  they  were  drawn  to 
practise  that  industry,  consequently,  to  or- 
ganize it  thoroughly,  to  provide  it  with  the 
most  perfect  equipment,  in  brief,  to  sink  a 
larger  and  larger  capital  in  it.  That  is  what 
actually  happened.  In  1869  Laroque  esti- 
mated at  19,500,000,000  francs,  that  is, 
$3,900,000,000,  the  value  of  the  property, 
real  and  personal,  appropriated  to  war  in  Eu- 
rope alone.1  It  is  without  doubt  no  exag- 
geration to  assume  that  that  sum  has  been 
tripled  at  the  very  least  since  1871.  But  let 
us  be  content  to  admit  that  it  has  merely  been 
doubled;  in  which  case  the  amount  would  be 
$8,000,000,000.  But  that  is  nothing.  At 
present  the  maintenance  of  European  armies 
costs  $1,063,000,000  a  year.2  The  money 
must  come  from  somewhere.  It  is  produced 
in  the  last  analysis  by  the  help  of  capital. 
So  it  is  right  to  regard  it  as  interest.     Capi- 

1  La  guerre  et  les  armees  permanentes,  Paris,  C.  Levy, 
1870,  p.  246. 

2  See  the  Riforma  sociale,  April,  1894,  p.  251. 


ECONOMIC  EFFECTS  33 

talizing  it,  we  obtain  a  principal  approxi- 
mating $21,200,000,000.  Thus,  the  aggre- 
gate of  capitals  used  in  military  enterprises 
amounts  to  $29,200,000,000.  There  is  only 
one  other  undertaking  in  the  world  that  has 
required  a  larger  sum,  the  railways.  War, 
therefore,  cannot  enrich  "  with  the  least  ex- 
penditure of  labor  and  energy,"  since  the 
capital  employed  in  war  is  greater  than  that 
employed  in  nearly  all  other  undertakings. 

This  has  always  been  so.  Military  equip- 
ment diminished  with  the  increase  of  security. 
Toulouse  no  longer  needs  to  defend  itself 
against  Paris.  So  it  is  useless  for  Toulouse 
to  fortify  itself  against  Paris,  or  Paris  against 
Toulouse.  But  of  old,  military  equipment 
was  indispensable.  Assuredly,  when  Italy 
was  divided  up  among  a  few  dozen  inde- 
pendent states  engaged  in  constant  warfare 
with  one  another,  the  capital  used  for  mili- 
tary  equipment  must  have  been  greater  in 
proportion  to  the  general  wealth  than  it  is 
to-day.  If  to-morrow  Europe  were  to  unite 
in  a  federation,  the  capital  appropriated  fqr 


34  ECONOMIC  EFFECTS 

war  would  be  reduced  in  an  enormous  de- 
gree. 

Thus,  not  only  has  war  never  enriched 
u  with  the  least  expenditure  of  labor  and  en- 
ergy," but  itjias  even  decreased  man's  wel^ 
fare.  Wealth  does  not  proceed  from  the  pos- 
session  of  precious  metals  or  any  other  com- 
modity, but  from  the  degree  of  the  earth's 
adaptation  to  mankind's  needs.  Since  1648 
war  has  cost  the  European  nations  alone 
SScooOiOOOiOdo.1  It  would  not  be  exag- 
gerating to  say  that  in  the  entire  historic 
period  war  has  cost  at  least  ten  times  that 
amount.  Then,  at  the  very  lowest  estimate, 
war  has  cost  in  all  $800,000,000,000.  What 
does  that  mean?  It  means  that  a  certain 
number  of  days  of  work,  the  money  value  of 
which  is  equal  to  that  sum,  were  employed  by 
men  in  killing  one  another.  Suppose  the 
same  effort  had  been  expended  in  cultivating 
the  soil,  irrigating  the  fields,  weaving  cloth, 
building  houses,  leveling  roads,  channeling 
harbors,  and  so  on,  is  it  not  perfectly  clear 

1  §ee  my  Gas  pillages  des  societes  modernes,  p.  165. 


ECONOMIC  EFFECTS  35 

that  the  world's  face  would  be  entirely  dif- 
ferent  to-day?  We  should  be  at  least  ten 
times  as  prosperous,  or,  in  other  words,  the 
sum  of  suffering  would  have  been  perceptibly 
less  for  us  unhappy  beings. 

Fortunately,  one  great  point  has  already 
been  won.     Nobody  nowadays  asserts   that 

*     '  '        "  ■*--  ■ irr 

war    is    lucrative.     Formerly    the    opinion 

i_ -  — -  "-  i«» " *• ' '  *  x 

that  war  brought  material  benefits  to 
the  victors  was  universally  accepted.  But 
for  two  centuries  the  economists  have 
been  fighting  with  indomitable  energy  to 
prove  that  this  notion  is  erroneous.  They 
have  won  their  cause.  Even  Mr.  de  Mo- 
linari's  assertion,  quoted  at  the  beginning  of 
this  chapter,  has  reference  to  the  past  and 
not  to  the  present.  The  Belgian  economist 
labors  under  a  delusion:  war  never  has  been 
lucrative,  no  more  in  the  age  of  bronze  than 
in  this  year  of  our  Lord.  However,  though 
he  makes  this  mistake  in  regard  to  the  past, 
no  one  has  demonstrated  more  clearly  how 
ruinous  war  is  in  the  present,  despite  the 
most  brilliant  victories.    No  one  denies  this 


36  ECONOMIC  EFFECTS 

truth,  not  even  Mr.  Valbert,  who  takes  pleas- 
ure in  enumerating  the  disasters  produced  by 
the  military  spirit.  It  is  just  because  par- 
tisans of  war  have  been  beaten  in  this  field 
that  they  seek  another.  They  fall  back  on 
morality.  I  should  really  like  to  know  what 
there  is  in  common  between  fierce,  pitiless 
butchery  and  morality.  Yet,  it  appears,  there 
is  something  in  common.  Mr.  Valbert  says 
so  with  truly  praiseworthy  assurance.  "  The 
moralist  is  ready  to  grant  all  that  [economic 
losses],  yet,  no  matter  how  great  his  respect 
for  figures,  he  reserves  his  judgment.  The 
question  seems  to  him  complex.  Has  it  been 
proved  that  certain  plagues  have  not  had 
beneficial  results?  If  it  depended  upon  the 
moralist  to  suppress  war,  he  might  hesitate, 
perhaps."1  He  might  hesitate,  perhaps! 
There  you  have  it,  black  on  white  1 

1Ibid.,  p.   695. 


CHAPTER  VI 
POLITICAL  EFFECTS 

One  of  the  benefits  attributed  to  war  is 
that  it  founded  those  great  nations,  England, 
France,  and  Germany,  which  are  such  shin- 
ing centers  of  civilization. 

In  the  middle  ages  it  was  said  that  God 
ruled  the  world  through  the  intermediation 
of  the  Franks,  Gesta  Dei  per  Francos.  Now- 
adays we  believe  that  without  the  powerful 
states  of  modern  Europe  science,  the  arts, 
and  literature  would  never  have  undergone 
their  magnificent  development.  Suppose  war 
in  the  past  had  been  suppressed,  what  would 
the  world  be?  Nothing  but  a  dust-pile  of 
little  states,  without  cohesion,  or  force,  or 
elasticity,  or  consistency  of  ideas.  Such  a 
formless  chaos  would  mean  primitive  savag- 
ery in  all  its  hideousness  and  degradation. 

Here  we  have  a  fallacy  more  monstrous 

37 


38  POLITICAL  EFFECTS 

than  any  of  the  others.  It  is  so  foolish  and 
presupposes  so  complete  an  absence  of  logic 
that  one  is  positively  stupefied  to  see  it  main- 
tained for  more  than  a  day. 

In  the  first  place,  what  does  national  unity 
mean — the  national  unity  of  France,  for  exam- 
ple? It  means  that  38,000,000  men  in- 
habiting 536,000  square  kilometres  have 
found  a  way  of  adjusting  their  differences 
other  than  the  beastly  murder  of  one  another 
on  fields  of  battle.  Nowadays  Paris,  Lyons, 
Marseilles,  Bordeaux,  Lille,  and  Toulouse  no 
longer  wage  war  one  against  the  other.  If 
they  were  to  do  so  to-morrow,  France's  unity 
would  instantly  cease.  Until  1861  Virginia, 
Kentucky,  Ohio,  and  Massachusetts  lived  in 
peace.  When  the  Southerners  raised  the 
standard  of  revolt  and  began  hostilities,  the 
American  Union  was  ruptured.  It  was  re- 
established and  continued  because  the  differ- 
ences of  the  forty-six  states,  extending  from 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  are  adjusted  by 
the  Supreme  Court  at  Washington,  and  not 
by  carnage  on  battlefields. 


POLITICAL  EFFECTS  39 

National  unity,  therefore,  is  established  on 
the  day  on  which  war  ends. 

Very  well,  you  say,  unity  once  established 
implies  a  state  of  peace,  but  was  not  war  the 
instrument  of  its  establishment?  Never! 
War  has  always  prevented  unity,  has  thwarted 
and  retarded  it. 

In  the  fourteenth  century  there  were  five 
to  six  hundred  independent  states  in  Ger- 
many, which  constantly  made  war  upon  one 
another,  and  Germany's  unity  disappeared  al- 
together. To  restore  it,  it  was  necessary  by 
force  of  arms  to  compel  all  the  petty  poten- 
tates to  submit  to  a  legal  order,  that  is,  to 
live  in  peace.  This  benefit  is  attributed  to 
war.  But  no  attention  is  paid  to  the  fact  that 
it  is  precisely  because  those  petty  potentates 
wanted  to  retain  the  right  to  wage  war  that 
Germany's  unity  was  unattainable  for  so 
long  a  time.  If  after  the  tenth  century  the 
different  fractions  of  the  German  race  had 
not  offered  resistance  to  the  establishment  in 
common  of  really  efficacious  institutions, 
Germany's   unity   might   have   begun  under 


4o  POLITICAL  EFFECTS 

Henry  the  Fowler  and  might  have  lasted  to 
the  present.  Hence,  it  was  not  war  that  pro- 
duced Germany's  unity.  War  prevented  it  for 
nearly  nine  centuries. 

That  is  true  of  all  other  communities. 
11  No  country,"  says  Mr.  Lacombe,1  "  had  so 
little  militarism  in  the  middle  ages  as  Eng- 
land." Consequently  it  was  the  first  to  unify, 
while  Germany's  unity  was  the  slowest  of 
all  in  forming,  because  even  as  late  as  i860 
the  kings  of  Hanover,  Bavaria,  and  Saxony 
wished  to  be  free  to  declare  war  on  their 
neighbors  when  it  seemed  good  to  them  to 
do  so. 

There  is  another  side  to  the  question.  The 
French  of  northern  France  took  forcible 
possession  of  the  land  of  the  nation  speaking 
the  langue  d'oc.  Finally  they  assimilated 
them.  The  various  southern  dialects  degen- 
erated into  the  people's  patois,  and  the  langue 
d'oil  became  the  modern  French,  and  was 
raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  literary  language. 
French  unity,  then,  was  composed  of  two  ele- 

1  L'histoire   consideree   comme   science,  p.   349. 


POLITICAL  EFFECTS  41 

ments.  It  is  thought  it  would  never  have 
been  formed  without  the  crushing  of  the 
southern  element,  and  for  that  reason  the  ex- 
istence of  French  unity  is  attributed  to  war. 

To  do  justice  to  this  point  we  must  make 
a  slight  digression.  Let  us  suppose  that 
the  Languedocian  nationality  had  survived. 
Where  would  be  the  harm  forsooth?  Euro- 
pean civilization,  the  source  of  our  chief  en- 
joyments, does  not  proceed  from  the  fact  that 
English  is  now  spoken  by  110,000,000  men, 
Russian  by  80,000,000,  German  by  60,000,- 
000,  and  French  by  45,000,000.  The  pro- 
portion might  have  been  different  without  al- 
tering the  brilliancy  of  European  civilization 
for  the  better  or  the  worse.  Civilization  is 
not  made  by  the  relative  number  of  spoken 
languages,  but  by  the  sum  of  the  scientific 
knowledge  and  artistic  treasures  accumulated 
by  mankind.  Europe  is  now  divided  into 
eighteen  main  principalities.  It  might  have 
been  divided  into  fifteen  or,  twenty-five,  and 
civilization  would  in  no  wise  have  been  af- 
fected.   If,  then,  instead  of  five  great  Latin 


42  POLITICAL  EFFECTS 

nations  we  should  have  had  six  with  the  ad- 
dition of  the  Languedocian,  our  wealth,  our 
prosperity,  and  our  intellectual  development 
would  not  have  suffered  the  least  setback. 

But  the  French  are  still  deluded  by  the 
belief  that  linguistic  boundaries  of  necessity 
follow  political  boundaries.  The  Hapsburg 
dynasty  founded  the  Austrian  Empire  at  the 
beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  by  the  ac- 
quisition of  Hungary  and  Bohemia.  Never- 
theless, in  neither  Hungary  nor  Bohemia  is 
German  spoken  as  French  is  spoken  in  the 
Provence.  National  assimilation  is  governed 
by  special  factors.  It  is  an  intellectual  phe- 
nomenon that  has  its  special  laws.  This, 
however,  is  not  the  place  to  enter  into  an 
examination  of  them.1  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
a  language  and  a  culture  may  be  propagated 
without  the  conquest  of  territories.  Martin 
Canal,  in  1275,  wrote  a  history  of  Venice  in 
French,  because,  he  said,  that  language  "  est 
mult  delectable  a  lire  et  a  oir  "  (is  very  pleas- 

1 1    refer   the    reader   to   my   Polittques   Internationales 
and  my  Luttes  entre  societes  humaines. 


POLITICAL  EFFECTS  43 

ant  to  read  and  to  hear) .  But  a  little  more, 
and  the  whole  of  northern  Italy  would  have 
done  the  same  as  Canal.  Dante's  genius, 
Petrarch's,  and  Boccaccio's  assured  pre-emi- 
nence to  the  Italian  language.  Tuscany 
never  widened  its  boundaries  beyond  the  con- 
ventional limits,  yet  its  language  has  be- 
come the  literary  language  of  the  Apennine 
peninsula.  Likewise  Saxony  never  conquered 
Germany,  yet  its  dialect  became  the  literary 
language  of  that  great  country.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Turks  ever  since  the  four- 
teenth century  have  imposed  their  dominion 
on  the  Balkan  peninsula  without  succeeding 
in  imposing  their  language  upon  the  Servians 
or  Bulgarians.  So  nothing  shows  that  even 
if  southern  France  had  not  been  conquered, 
French  would  not  have  been  spoken  to-day  at 
Toulouse  and  Marseilles,  just  as  it  is  at  Brus- 
sels and  Geneva,  cities  which  have  not  formed 
a  part  of  the  kingdom  of  the  Capets. 

Brute  conquest  does  not  always  result  in 
linguistic  expansion,  and  even  from  this  point 
of    view    war    is    useless.     It    is    not    to 


44  POLITICAL  EFFECTS 

wholesale  slaughter  on  fields  of  battle  that 
we  owe  the  existence  of  those  glorious 
historic  entities  called  England,  Germany, 
France,  and  Italy.  It  is  to  a  galaxy  of  gen- 
iuses and  talents  of  all  kinds,  to  Dante,  to 
Shakespeare,  to  Descartes,  to  Goethe,  and 
the  rest. 

Thus,  not  only  has  war  not  formed  the 
great  national  unities,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
it  has  even  retarded  their  political  organiza- 
tion by  several  centuries. 

I  call  the  attention  of  routine  partizans  of 
brutality  to  another  fact  of  infinitely  greater 
importance.  Suppress  war,  and  the  unity  of 
the  human  race  in  its  entirety  is  instantly  re- 
alized. Universal  unity  does  not  exist  now 
because  Germany,  France,  Russia,  and  the 
other  states  wish  to  remain  free  to  declare 
war  whenever  it  seems  good  to  them  to  do 
so,  like  Saxony,  Bavaria,  and  Hanover  within 
the  German  nation,  who  not  so  long  ago 
wished  the  same  thing  for  themselves.  Let 
the  sovereign  states  renounce  that  liberty,  let 
them  find  a  way  of  adjusting  their  differences 


POLITICAL  EFFECTS  45 

other  than  massacre — in  brief,  let  them  sup- 
press war — and  the  unity  of  mankind  is  ac- 
complished. 

War,  we  see,  for  long  centuries  has  pre- 
vented the  formation  of  the  great  national 
unities.  For  more  centuries  to  come  it  will 
prevent  the  unity  of  all  mankind.  Conse- 
quently, from  a  political  point  of  view,  as 
well  as  from  all  others,  it  produces  evil  and 
does  not  produce  good. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  we  found  that 
wars  must  in  all  have  cost  $800,000,000,000 
at  the  very  least.  That  probably  represents 
approximately  4,000,000,000,000  days  of 
work.  All  that  prodigious  effort  went  to  give 
our  continent  the  political  boundaries  now  ex- 
isting :  that  is,  twenty- four  independent  states, 
a  France  of  536,000  square  kilometres,  a 
Germany  of  540,000  square  kilometres,  a 
Servia  of  48,000  square  kilometres,  etc. 
Now,  all  that  effort  has  been  as  completely 
lost  as  if  it  had  gone  to  the  rolling  of  the 
rock  of  Sisyphus,  or  to  filling  the  sieves  of 
the    Danai'des.     Man's   welfare    is   not   the 


46  POLITICAL  EFFECTS 

work  of  political  divisions.  Whether  Europe 
is  divided  into  ten  or  into  fifty  states,  it  will 
not  be  the  more  civilized  or  the  more  bar- 
barous. Enjoyment  proceeds  from  wealth, 
which,  in  its  turn,  is  nothing  other  than  the 
adaptation  of  the  globe  to  our  needs.  Men 
will  remain  poor  and  undergo  infinite  suf- 
fering as  long  as  they  apply  the  greater  part 
of  their  efforts  to  a  purely  metaphysical  task. 
The  idea  that  our  happiness  is  in  direct  ratio 
to  the  number  of  square  kilometres  in  our 
state  is  a  pure  abstraction.  But  our  happi- 
ness certainly  does  depend  upon  the  amount 
of  international  security  we  enjoy.  It  is  a 
common  belief  that  the  larger  a  state  is,  the 
more  powerful  it  is  and  the  more  able  to  pro- 
vide security.  That  would  be  true  if,  while 
our  own  state  increased,  the  others  remained 
stationary.  But  such  is  not  the  case.  They, 
too,  increase.  Then,  instead  of  diminishing, 
the  risks  increase,  because  the  encounter  of 
two  enormous  states  like  France  and  Ger- 
many will  certainly  cause  more  disasters  and 
massacres  than  the  encounter  of  two  minor 


POLITICAL  EFFECTS  47 

states.  Security,  therefore,  does  not  increase 
in  direct  ratio  to  square  kilometres,  and 
the  prodigious  effort  expended  for  centu- 
ries upon  the  aggrandizement  of  states,  the 
4,000,000,000,000  days  of  work  devoted  to 
that  end  are  absolutely  and  entirely  lost.  Se- 
curity never  will  be  obtained  by  war.  It 
will  be  obtained  only  by  the  suppression  of 
wan 


CHAPTER  VII 

INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS 

"  If  the  philanthropists  were  to  succeed  in 
suppressing  war,  they  would,  with  the  best 
intentions  in  the  world,  be  rendering  but  a 
poor  service  to  mankind.  They  would  by 
no  means  be  working  for  the  ennoblement  of 
our  race.  Unending  peace  would  plunge  the 
nations  into  dangerous  lethargy."  Thus  Mr. 
Valbert.1  Melchior  de  Vogue  says :  "  The  cer- 
tainty of  peace  (I  do  not  say  an  actual  state  of 
peace)  would,  before  the  expiration  of  half  a 
century,  engender  a  state  of  corruption  and 
decadence  more  destructive  of  men  than  the 
worst  wars."  This  quotation  is  taken  from 
an  article  in  the  Almanack  Hachette  of  1894, 
entitled  "  Our  Future."  The  appearance  of 
this  article  is  a  very  remarkable  phenomenon. 

1  Ibid.,  p.  692. 

48 


INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS  49 

In  their  preface  the  editors  say  they  wished 
the  Almanack  to  be  of  service  to  everybody, 
and  to  be  so  useful  as  to  become  indis- 
pensable. They  wanted  it  to  have  the  char- 
acter of  a  small,  popular  encyclopedia.  So 
a  great  many  copies  were  published.  Evi- 
dently the  editors  quoted  De  Vogue  be- 
cause they  considered  the  opinion  he  ex- 
pressed to  be  one  of  the  truths  that  cannot  be 
disseminated  too  widely  among  the  people. 
From  the  mere  fact  of  its  publication  in  the 
Almanack  it  acquires  great  importance  for  us. 

It  will  not  do  to  rest  satisfied  with  words. 
Let  us  examine  facts,  and  see  if  they  confirm 
the  opinion  that  war  favors  the  development 
of  human  intelligence  and  prevents  mental 
lethargy. 

Men  have  always  tried  to  improve  their 
condition.  They  have  pursued  agriculture 
in  order  not  to  suffer  hunger,  they  have  built 
houses  to  protect  them  against  cold.  Briefly, 
they  have  constantly  tried  to  adapt  their  en- 
vironment to  their  needs.  When  certain  in- 
dividuals have  been  freed  from  concern  for 


50  INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS 

their  daily  bread,  they  have  turned  to  the 
arts,  or  literature,  or  science,  or  philosophy. 
A  natural  inclination  leads  from  economic 
production  to  intellectual  production,  that  is, 
to  civilization.  This  evolution  presupposes 
a  sufficient  degree  of  security.  For  if  man 
had  been  perpetually  despoiled  by  his  neigh- 
bor, wealth  could  not  have  accumulated,  and 
intellectual  needs  could  not  have  arisen. 
Thanks  to  certain  fortuitous  circumstances, 
it  has  come  about  that  some  countries  have 
enjoyed  sufficient  security  for  a  sufficient 
length  of  time  for  civilization  to  progress 
and,  in  some  places,  to  become  brilliant.  But 
all  the  nations  did  not  advance  at  an  equal 
pace.  While  some  made  great  progress  in 
technical  knowledge,  in  literature,  science, 
and  the  arts,  others  lived  in  savagery  or  bar- 
barism. The  latter,  consumed  with  envy  at 
the  sight  of  the  enjoyments  of  the  civilized 
peoples,  often  attacked  and  slaughtered  them 
without  mercy.  This  happened  time  and 
again  in  both  hemispheres.  In  America,  in 
regions  now  occupied  by  entirely  savage  In- 


INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS  51 

dians,  we  find  the  remains  of  monuments 
showing  that  of  old  a  civilized  people  had 
lived  in  the  country. 

If  there  had  been  no  war,  it  is  clear,  such 
events  would  never  have  come  to  pass.  How 
can  the  periodic  massacre  of  more  educated 
and  cultivated  people  by  the  more  savage  and 
ignorant  people  favor  the  development  of  the 
human  mind?  I  for  my  part  do  not  see  how 
it  possibly  can.  Why  should  there  have  been 
more  light  in  Europe  after  a  stupid  Ro- 
man soldier  murdered  Archimedes  than  there 
had  been  before?  I  should  like  the  partizans 
of  slaughter  to  answer  that  question.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  human  civilization  grew,  not 
because  of,  but  in  spite  of,  war. 

Reduce  war  to  its  simplest  expression.  X 
and  Y  have  a  dispute.  X  does  not  succeed 
in  convincing  Y.  X  gets  angry,  attacks  Y, 
and  kills  him.  Recourse  to  murder  is  per- 
force a  reaction  of  the  brute  against  the  mind. 
This  is  true,  and  will  continue  to  be  true,  of 
all  wars.  Barbarians  see  the  life  of  a 
civilized  people.     They  desire  the  same  ad- 


52  INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS 

vantages.  The  intellectual  procedure  would 
be  for  them  to  produce  wealth  and  educate 
themselves.  The  brutal  procedure  consists 
in  practising  spoliation  by  violence,  that  is, 
in  practising  war.  On  the  instant  that  war 
breaks  out,  instead  of  two  groups  working 
to  acquire  a  superior  civilization,  only  one 
pursuing  that  end  remains.  Therefore,  be- 
ginning with  the  moment  that  hostilities  com- 
mence, the  sum  of  intelligence  in  humanity 
decreases. 

War  has  always  produced  selection  for  the 
worse,  not  for  the  better.  Its  tendency  has 
been  to  destroy  communities  more  especially 
devoted  to  mental  pursuits.  Like  the  north 
wind,  it  has  blown  away  some  of  the  most 
delicate  and  sweetest-swelling  flowers  of  man- 
kind, Athens  and  Florence.  Those  marvelous 
centers  perished  from  the  blows  of  a  base, 
brutal  soldiery.  Here  we  have  an  instance 
of  how  war  furthers  the  development  of  the 
intelligence ! 

"It  would  seem,"  says  Mr.  E.  Perrier,1 

1  Philosophic   zoologique,  Paris,   Alcan,   1884,  p.    17. 


INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS  53 

"  that  after  Aristotle,  science,  which  he  had 
set  upon  the  right  path,  had  nothing  to  do 
but  to  continue  along  that  path.  We  should 
expect  to  see  a  marvelous  scientific  efflores- 
cence follow  upon  the  appearance  of  that 
great  man.  Unfortunately,  the  political  di- 
visions, the  wars,  the  invasions  would  not 
allow  the  continuation  of  the  work  begun  in 
the  East."  The  same  is  true  of  all  times. 
The  wars  of  the  Revolution  and  the  Empire 
caused  a  period  of  considerable  arrestment 
to  the  intellectual  development  of  Europe. 
The  impulse  given  by  the  encyclopedists  was 
weakened.  Peace  was  needed  before  any  ad- 
vance could  be  made  again. 

If  war  favored  the  activity  of  the  mind, 
the  most  warlike  people  would  be  endowed 
with  the  most  advanced  scientific  spirit.  His- 
tory demonstrates  that  the  very  reverse  is 
true.  War  produces  a  selection  for  the  worse. 
It  has  never  favored  the  intellectual  devel- 
opment of  humanity.  No  more  has  it  pre- 
vented mental  lethargy.  On  the  contrary,  it 
has  always  increased  it. 


54  INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS 

In  the  sixteenth  century  the  Flemings 
embraced  Protestantism.  The  Spaniards 
thought  that  abominable.  Suppose  they  had 
sent  forth  a  multitude  of  preachers  to  Bel- 
gium to  bring  back  the  stray  sheep.  What 
activity,  what  an  intellectual  ebullition  would 
have  taken  place  there!  The  Spaniards 
would  have  preached  in  the  churches,  they 
would  have  held  lectures,  debates,  great  mass- 
meetings.  They  would  have  published  nu- 
merous writings.  The  Flemings  would  have 
done  the  same.  Discussion  would  have 
sharpened  their  wits.  And  the  Spaniards 
either  would  have  been  able  to  convince  the 
Flemings  of  the  falseness  of  Protestantism, 
or  they  themselves  would  have  gone  over  to 
the  new  ideas.  Both  events  would  doubtless 
have  arisen,  and  theological  discussions  would 
have  kept  the  people  in  a  lively  mental  state 
for  many  years.  The  study  of  one  science 
brings  in  its  train  the  knowledge  of  others. 
To  find  arguments  for  or  against  Catholicism 
one  must  have  made  profound  historic  and 
philosophic  investigations.     Briefly,   a  great 


INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS  55 

intellectual  blossoming  would  have  taken 
place  in  the  Netherlands,  and  the  country 
would  have  become  the  arena  of  immense  in- 
tellectual activity. 

But  Philip  II  did  not  for  a  single  instant 
think  of  using  persuasion.  In  a  dispute  in 
regard  to  something  intellectual  he  did  not 
wish  to  employ  intellectual  methods.  He 
sent  out  troops,  and  carried  on  a  war. 
Thanks  to  the  defection  of  the  Walloon  no- 
bility, the  old  Spanish  troops  beat  the  Flem- 
ings in  the  open  country.  Then  the  Duke  of 
Alba  came.  He  massacred,  hung,  tortured, 
and  exiled  thousands  of  persons.  Terror 
hovered  over  those  wretched  provinces.  The 
whole  country  sank  into  a  state  of  dismal 
mental  lethargy.  The  generous  Flemish  folk 
fell  into  so  heavy  a  sleep  that  they  have 
scarcely  succeeded  in  rousing  themselves  even 
to  this  day.  From  this  we  can  see  how  war 
prevents  people  from  succumbing  to  "  dan- 
gerous lethargy."  The  apologists  of  slaugh- 
ter should  be  satisfied  with  that  proof.  We 
know,  alas !  that  what  took  place  in  the  Neth- 


56  INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS 

erlands  in  the  sixteenth  century  has  been  re- 
peated on  a  thousand  other  occasions. 

In  our  day  war  is  still  one  of  the  most 
powerful  causes  of  mental  stagnation. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  more  costly  war 
becomes,  the  more  necessary  large  political 
unities  are  to  bear  the  expense.  In  our  days 
a  state  with  fewer  than  30,000,000  to  40,- 
000,000  inhabitants  survives  only  by  the  tol- 
erance and  rivalry  of  its  more  powerful 
neighbors.  A  country  cannot  have  a  truly 
independent  policy  unless  it  has  a  yearly 
budget  of  $400,000,000.  Now,  many  tax- 
payers are  needed  for  such  a  huge  sum  to  be 
raised  annually.  So  we  are  forced  to  draw 
together  into  large  states  of  at  least  500,000 
square  kilometres.  What  happens  then?  A 
vast  capital  attracts  all  the  living  forces  of 
a  nation.  It  becomes  a  disproportionate, 
monstrous  head.  The  rest  of  the  country  is 
drained  of  its  blood.  The  provinces!  The 
very  word  evokes  in  France  the  idea  of  un- 
bearable boredom,  of  a  torpidity  resembling 
vegetable  existence.    Lately  a  French  scholar 


INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS  57 

complained  of  not  being  able  to  live  in  even 
the  largest  provincial  cities.  They  offered 
him  none  of  the  resources  indispensable  to 
the  study  of  his  specialty.  The  same  is  the 
case  in  many  other  countries.  Now,  it  is  to 
war  that  we  owe  that  adorable  lethargy. 
Without  war  the  leviathan  states  would 
have  been  useless.  As  long  as  Italy  and  Ger- 
many were  divided  into  petty  sovereignties, 
they  were  the  sport  of  their  powerful  neigh- 
bors, France,  Austria,  Russia.  Italy  and 
Germany  had  to  swim  with  the  current;  they 
unified  themselves.  Without  war  federations 
of  little  states  would  have  been  formed,  in 
which  a  wise  and  harmonious  balance  would 
have  been  established  between  the  institu- 
tions maintained  in  common  and  the  local 
autonomy.  But  war  intervened  to  disturb 
all  that.  Two  things  happened:  either  the 
petty  potentates  refused  to  give  up  the  right 
to  declare  hostilities — in  which  case  national 
unification  was  not  achieved — or  the  danger 
from  the  outside  and  the  royal  power  were 
the  incentives  to  the  establishment  of  a  cen- 


58  INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS 

tralized  government,  which  wiped  out  all 
traces  of  life  in  the  minor  centers.  Lethargy 
was  in  direct  ratio  to  international  insecurity. 

Moreover,  when  the  army  becomes  a  na- 
tion's chief  organ,  it  naturally  absorbs  the 
most  of  its  best  nutritive  substance.  Com- 
pare the  army  budget  with  the  public  edu- 
cation budget.  In  France  the  proportion  is 
890,000,000  to  227,000,000  francs;  in  Rus- 
sia, 736,000,000  to  58,000,000.  At  present 
armed  peace  costs  the  Europeans  $2,000,- 
000,000  a  year.  Free  the  Europeans  from 
that  burden  and  they  will  doubtless  devote 
a  very  much  greater  sum  to  their  intellectual 
development. 

Ceaseless  warfare  must  certainly  engender 
hatred  between  the  combatants.  Since  the 
alien  was  always  the  one  who  harmed  us,  he 
was  always  treated  with  hostility.  He  was 
refused  legal  protection  and  civil  privileges. 
That  state  of  things  in  a  great  degree  pre- 
vented men  from  living  outside  their  father- 
lands. War,  therefore,  set  up  the  most  diffi- 
cult obstacles  to  a  mixture  of  populations. 


INTELLECTUAL  EFFECTS  59 

Now,  as  we  know,  the  crossing  of  races  is 
a  most  powerful  agent  for  their  improve- 
ment, and  the  spread  of  ideas  is  a  chief  pre- 
ventive of  intellectual  stagnation.  Since  war 
in  a  large  measure  hindered  migrations,  it  has 
contributed  here  also  to  the  retardation  of 
humanity's  progress. 

To  sum  up,  war  is  a  selection  for  the 
worse,  which  destroys  the  more  cultivated 
and  leaves  the  more  barbarous.  It  has  al- 
ways held  back  mental  progress,  and  at  this 
very  day  it  increases  mental  stagnation.  So 
I  do  not  see  how  it  can  "  ennoble  "  our  kind 
by  preventing  us  from  "  falling  into  dan- 
gerous lethargy." 


$JW 


t* 


CHAPTER  VIII 
MORAL  EFFECTS 

The  apologists  of  war  extol  its  moral 
benefits  above  any  of  the  others. 

11  Peace  would  produce  corruption,"  says 
De  Vogue.  Mr.  Valbert  is  more  explicit: 
"  In  peace  man  belongs  to  himself.  He 
knows  no  other  law  than  his  personal  in- 
terest. He  no  longer  has  any  other  occupa- 
tion than  to  seek  his  own  good.  The*  great- 
est virtue  is  self-abnegation,  the  spirit  of  self- 
sacrifice,  and  it  is  in  armies  during  war  that 
that  virtue  is  practised.  It  is  not  only  the  indi- 
viduals whom  war  ennobles,  but  also  the  en- 
tire nation."  * 

1  Ibid.,  p.  696.  The  motive  dictating  these  words  is 
perfectly  comprehensible.  There  are  individuals  in 
France  who  from  sheer  epicureanism  would  be  quite 
willing  to  give  up  Alsace-Lorraine.  They  say:  "Pro- 
vided we  have  a  good  dinner  and  all  sorts  of  pleasure, 
nothing   else   counts   for   much."     All   the   dithyrambs   in 

60 


MORAL  EFFECTS  61 

Errors  so  manifest  cannot  be  maintained 
except  by  the  one-sided  fallacy.  Let 
us  take  the  assailant's  point  of  view.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  is  always  the  assailant  who 
must  be  considered,  since  without  attack  there 
is  no  need  for  defense.  As  soon  as  we  do 
this,  the  falsity  of  Mr.  Valbert's  proposition 
becomes  apparent. 

Say  to  a  nation:  "  Arm  yourselves  to  your 
teeth.  Invade  the  country  of  your  peaceful 
neighbors.  Murder  a  goodly  number  of  them 
on  the  battlefield.  Then,  after  having  con- 
quered them,  seize  booty,  impose  heavy  trib- 
utes, confiscate  their  lands,  lay  hold  of  the 
revenues  from  their  taxes,  live  like  parasites 
on  the  product  of  their  toil.  If  the  van- 
quished speak  a  language  different  from  your 
own,  stunt  their  intellectual  development  by 

favor  of  war  are  a  reaction  against  such  tendencies. 
I  am  entirely  of  the  same  opinion  as  Mr.  Valbert.  If 
those  dastards  were  to  triumph,  if  France  gave  up  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  she  would  soon  share  Poland's  fate.  The 
French  (and  all  other  people)  should  vindicate  their 
rights  with  their  last  drop  of  blood.  So,  what  I  write 
does  not  refer  to  those  who  defend  their  rights,  but  to 
those  who  violate  the  rights  of  others,  in  this  case,  not 
the  French,  but  the  Prussians. 


62  MORAL  EFFECTS 

the  most  violent  despotism.  If  your  new 
subjects  profess  a  religion  different  from  your 
own,  treat  them  with  intolerance.  Deprive 
the  heterodox  of  their  civil  and  political 
rights,  inflict  the  severest  trials  upon  them, 
expel  them  en  masse.  Then  we  shall  see  all 
the  virtues  flourish  in  your  midst,  self-abne- 
gation and  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice.  You 
will  be  regenerated  and  ennobled." 

Who  would  venture  to  uphold  a  proposi- 
tion so  paradoxical  ?  All  the  acts  I  just  men- 
tioned are  the  consequence  of  war.  How  can 
robbery,  parasitism,  intolerance,  despotism 
ennoble  communities?  How  can  the  practice 
of  those  crimes  develop  all  the  virtues? 

Let  us  abandon  metaphysics  and  a  priori 
reasoning.  Let  us  use  the  empirical  method 
in  regard  to  social  phenomena,  just  as  it  has 
been  used  for  so  many  years  in  regard  to 
physical  phenomena.  If  war  ennobles,  then 
the  most  warlike  nations  should  be  the  most 
moral,  the  peaceful  nations  the  most  corrupt- 
Do  facts  confirm  that  proposition  ?  Nowhere 
and  never.    From  1494  to  1559  almost  con- 


MORAL  EFFECTS  63 

stant  warfare  reddened  Italy  with  blood.  Do 
we  find,  as  a  result,  that  all  the  virtues  flour- 
ished there?  On  the  contrary,  immoral- 
ity and  licentiousness  assumed  more  dread- 
ful proportions  than  ever.  It  was  then 
that  such  monsters  as  Pope  Alexander 
VI  and  his  noble  son  Caesar  Borgia  lived. 
Those  wars  and  the  awful  anarchy  that 
resulted  from  them  degraded  the  Italian 
character  to  so  low  a  level  that  more  than 
two  centuries  were  needed  for  dignity,  mag- 
nanimity, and  love  of  country  to  reassert 
themselves  in  even  a  slight  degree.  That  is 
how  war  ennobles  the  nations.  In  the  Orient 
the  same  causes  produced  the  same  effects. 
In  the  eighteenth  century  India  was  in  a 
state  similar  to  that  of  Italy  in  the  sixteenth 
century.  It  was  divided  into  a  number  of 
principalities,  the  chiefs  of  which  had  no 
other  concern  than  to  increase  their  terri- 
tory. Complete  anarchy  prevailed.  There 
were  perpetual  wars,  and  military  expeditions 
for  spoil  were  an  organized  industry.  Ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Valbert,  India  must  have  pre- 


64  MORAL  EFFECTS 

sented  the  spectacle  of  all  the  virtues.  Alas ! 
with  all  due  respect  to  Mr.  Valbert,  it  was, 
on  the  contrary,  a  sink  of  all  the  vices.  In- 
dian society  had  been  so  corrupted  by  the 
ceaseless  wars  that,  after  a  hundred  years  of 
the  wise,  healing  administration  of  the  Eng- 
lish, scarcely  any  individuals  out  of  a  popu- 
lation of  287,000,000  to-day  possess  the  feel- 
ing of  honor  or  loyalty.  Examples  could  be 
multiplied.  What  happened  in  India  has  also 
taken  place  in  other  countries  in  similar  cir- 
cumstances. 

Now,  as  to  the  effect  of  peace.  There 
are  four  European  nations  which  have  com- 
pletely renounced  the  idea  of  conquest  on  the 
European  continent:  the  English,  the  Dutch, 
the  Belgians,  and  the  Swiss.  Since  they  no 
longer  think  of  conducting  offensive  warfare, 
they  are  absolutely  pacific.  According  to  Mr. 
Valbert  and  those  who  believe  like  him,  they 
should  constitute  the  scum  of  humanity.  But 
with  all  due  regard  to  the  gentlemen,  the  very 
reverse  is  the  case.  The  Swiss  even  offer  an 
extreme  example  in  proof  of  this.    In  the  six- 


MORAL  EFFECTS  65 

teenth  century  no  war  took  place  in  the  Oc- 
cident without  the  participation  of  the  Swiss. 
They  were  the  most  bellicose  people  of  Eu- 
rope. Everybody  knows  they  were  also  the 
most  corrupt. 

Let  us  now  take  up  another  of  Mr.  Val- 
bert's  propositions.  "  War  gives  communi- 
ties salutary  instruction.  A  great  German 
moralist  defined  war  as  '  a  cure  by  iron  which 
strengthens  humanity/  and  through  the  gen- 
erosity of  fate,  this  cure  is  more  beneficial 
to  the  conquered  than  to  the  conquerors,  who, 
infatuated  by  their  glory,  readily  imagine 
that  everything  is  permissible  and  possible 
to  them." 

Here  again  Mr.  Valbert  falls  into  the  mis- 
take of  one-sided  reasoning,  which  is  all  the 
more  curious,  since  he  himself  notes  it. 

If  a  nation  undergoes  a  defeat,  another  na- 
tion, necessarily,  carries  off  a  victory.  If 
war  regenerates  the  first,  it  corrupts  the  sec- 
ond. So  the  devil  loses  nothing.  Sedan 
obliged  the  French  u  to  pass  judgment  upon 
themselves,  to  see  themselves  as  they  are,  to 


66  MORAL  EFFECTS 

reproach  themselves  for  their  mistakes,  to 
examine  their  own  conscience,  in  order  to 
prepare  themselves  for  useful  penitence  and 
upliftment."  *  Jena  produced  the  same  ef- 
fect upon  Prussia.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  result  of  Jena  was  to  "  infatuate "  the 
French,  and  of  Sedan  to  infatuate  the  Prus- 
sians. After  1806  we  have  a  virtuous  Prus- 
sia and  a  degenerate  France.  After  1871  we 
have  a  virtuous  France  and  a  degenerate 
Prussia.    Where  is  the  gain  to  humanity? 

But  neither  does  the  assertion  that  defeat 
always  regenerates  communities  withstand 
criticism.2  The  Byzantine  Empire  attained 
the  culmination  of  its  power  under  Herac- 
lius,  who  conducted  a  brilliant  campaign 
against  Persia.  He  penetrated  to  countries 
where  the  legions  of  Crassus  and  Trajan  had 
never  set  foot.  Soon  after,  the  Arabs  ap- 
peared.    The  Byzantines  were  beaten.     At 

1  Ibid.,  p.  696. 

2  Strange  reasoning  forsooth !  According  to  this  we 
should  always  desire  defeat.  Sometimes  after  typhoid 
fever,  it  is  said,  a  man  feels  better  than  he  did  before. 
Is  that  a  reason  for  desiring  typhoid  fever?  It  may  re- 
generate, but,   we  forget,   it  often  kills  the  patient, 


MORAL  EFFECTS  67 

a  stroke  they  lost  half  their  empire,  all  of 
Syria  and  Africa.  Since  that  time  until  the 
taking  of  Constantinople  by  Mohammed  II 
the  balance-sheet  of  the  Byzantine  wars 
shows  a  deficit.  The  Greeks  of  the  Eastern 
Empire  underwent  frightful  defeats.  Has 
Greece  been  elevated  on  that  account?  Has 
it  given  itself  a  better  organization?  Has  it 
subjected  itself  to  that  self-examination 
which  prepares  them  "  for  useful  penitence 
and  upliftment  "?  We  scarcely  hear  any- 
thing at  all  of  Greece  since  the  fall  of  the 
Eastern  Empire. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  the  Turks.  From 
John  Sobieski  to  the  present  they  have  re- 
ceived the  hardest  lessons.  It  is  difficult  to 
count  the  number  of  battles  in  which  they 
were  soundly  beaten.  Nevertheless,  the  or- 
ganization of  the  Turkish  empire  is  as 
wretched  to-day  as  it  was  in  the  seventeenth 
century;  in  fact,  in  many  respects  more 
wretched.  Then,  where  is  the  "  great  uplift- 
ment "  ?  And  Louis  XV's  government,  was 
it  any  better  after  than  before  the  battle  of 


68  MORAL  EFFECTS 

Rosbach?  Who  would  venture  to  say  it 
was? 

The  truth  is,  certain  nations  rise  after  a 
defeat  as  others  continue  to  progress  after 
a  victory — a  fact  depending  upon  extremely 
numerous  and  complex  causes  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  enter  into  in  this  short  work. 
Sometimes  defeat  may  be  a  factor  of  prog- 
ress, but  it  is  very  foolish  and  superficial  rea- 
soning to  attribute  the  upliftment  of  nations 
to  war  alone. 

The  apologists  of  bloodshed  forget  a 
further  extremely  important  fact.  There  are 
not  only  partial  defeats,  but  also  total  de- 
feats. In  1856  Russia  lost  1/1840  of  her 
territory,  in  1871  France  1/38  of  hers. 
Those  wounds  were  bearable.  Regeneration 
was  possible.  But  the  Greek  nation  passed 
entirely  under  the  Ottoman  yoke;  the  Irish, 
under  the  English  yoke.  The  whole  of  Po- 
land was  divided  among  its  three  neighbors. 
Now,  as  has  long  been  admitted,  political 
servitude  develops  the  greatest  defects  in  the 
subjugated      peoples — hypocrisy,     treachery, 


MORAL  EFFECTS  69 

mendacity,  baseness.  The  Bengalis,  whom 
we  discussed  in  Chapter  II,  were  completely 
corrupted  as  a  result  of  the  successive  inva- 
sions of  their  country.  If  the  upliftment  of 
a  few  nations  may  be  posted  on  the  debit  side 
of  war's  ledger,  we  must  post  the  complete 
demoralization  of  many  other  nations  on  the 
credit  side,  and  the  balance-sheet  will  cer- 
tainly show  a  loss.  The  elevation  of  senti- 
ments in  humanity  is  equal  to  a  sum  X, 
from  which  the  degradation  produced  by 
violence  and  tyranny,  that  is,  by  war, 
must  be  deducted.  The  subtraction  is 
formidable. 

After  a  conquest  the  selection  for  the 
worse  continues  to  operate  with  redoubled  en- 
ergy. Upon  this  point  Mr.  Vaccaro  speaks 
very  discerningly.  "  The  victor,  to  assure 
himself  of  the  obedience  of  the  vanquished, 
persecutes  and  maltreats  them.  He  even  exe- 
cutes the  strongest,  the  bravest,  and  most  in- 
domitable, while  he  allows  the  weaker,  the 
more  cowardly,  the  more  obedient  to  live. 
Since  these,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  others, 


70  MORAL  EFFECTS 

beget  children,  the  sentiments  of  baseness  and 
servility  become  fixed  in  the  race."  1 

Here  we  note  an  illogicality  to  which  the 
nations  said  to  be  civilized,  unfortunately, 
are  well  accustomed.  The  subjugated  peo- 
ple are  scorned  because  of  their  vices,  and 
because  they  are  scorned  they  come  to  be 
hated.  The  Russians  profess  profound  con- 
tempt for  the  Poles,  similarly  all  Christians 
profess  profound  contempt  for  the  unfortu- 
nate Jews.  Nevertheless,  there  was  so  simple 
a  way  of  not  degrading  them — to  respect 
the  independence  of  the  Poles,  and  not  to 
refuse  civil  and  political  rights  to  the  Jews. 
But  no,  for  eighteen  centuries  we  have  been 
maltreating  the  Jews  most  barbarously.  They 
have  fallen  into  disgrace.  We  hate  them  for 
that,  instead  of  hating  ourselves  for  having 
disgraced  them.  What  admirable  logic !  To 
be  angry  with  the  victims  and  not  with  the 
executioners ;  with  the  corrupted  and  not  with 
the  corrupters. 

1  La     lutte    pour    V existence    dans    rhumanite,    Paris, 
Chevalier-Maresq,    1892,    p.    $1. 


MORAL  EFFECTS  71 

From  Buddha's  times  to  ours  we  have 
preached  a  great  deal  on  morality  by  book 
and  by  word  of  mouth.  The  precepts  have 
always  been  formulated,  as  it  were,  in  the 
active  voice:  "  Thou  shalt  not  kill,  thou  shalt 
not  steal,  thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery, 
etc."  The  moralists  have  always  had  in  eye 
the  man  who  performs  an  act,  not  the  man 
who  is  the  object  of  that  act;  which  is  wholly 
logical,  since  the  conduct  of  the  object  is  con- 
ditioned by  the  conduct  of  the  performer. 
But  as  soon  as  international  relations  come 
into  question,  common  sense  disappears  as  by 
magic.  War  is  collective  murder.  Never- 
theless, it  is  overwhelmed  with  encomiums, 
wonderful  virtues  are  attributed  to  it,  solely 
because,  thanks  to  an  incomprehensible  fal- 
lacy, only  those  nations  are  had  in  mind  which 
are  the  victims  of  attack,  not  those  which  com- 
mit them.  We  willingly  concede  to  the  apol- 
ogists of  war  that  to  defend  one's  rights  at 
the  risk  of  one's  life,  or  even  to  lose  one's 
life  in  doing  so,  is  the  most  admirable  con- 
duct   imaginable.      My   warmest    sympathy 


72  MORAL  EFFECTS 

goes  out  to  those  noble  victims  who  preferred 
death  to  disgrace.  Yes,  war  might  produce 
morality,  but  on  the  one  condition  that  com- 
munities could  defend  themselves  without  be- 
ing attacked. 

Another  argument.  If  the  8,000  wars  of 
the  historic  period  could  not  make  us  moral, 
what  chance  is  there  that  the  eight  thousand 
and  first  will  effect  that  result? 

Can  the  apologists  of  war  deny  that  blood- 
shed produces  international  hatred,  and  in- 
ternational hatred  produces  the  most  baleful 
evils?  Does  it  not  set  the  greatest  obstacle 
in  the  way  of  a  mixture  of  races  and  the 
propagation  of  ideas?  Is  it  not  the  most  ac- 
tive cause  of  our  backwardness  and  mental 
stagnation?  Is  it  not  war  that  has  turned 
Europe  into  an  intrenched  camp  and  a  mine 
of  dynamite  ?  Is  it  not  war  that  has  plunged 
us  into  the  sad  state  in  which  we  are  to- 
day? "  Too  much  gall  has  gathered  among 
the  European  nations  for  them  to  be  able 
to  think  of  disarmament,"  says  the  Moscow 
Gazette. 


MORAL  EFFECTS  73 

Such  reasoning  is  really  remarkable!  Ac- 
cording to  the  Moscow  journalist,  disarma- 
ment is  impossible  because  a  new  war  is  in- 
evitable. It  will  be  the  crudest  war  that  his- 
tory has  ever  noted  in  its  annals,  the  horrible 
encounter  of  12,000,000  men,  armed  with 
the  most  powerful  engines  of  destruction. 
The  victims  will  be  numberless.  If  hostili- 
ties continue  only  a  few  months,  it  will  be  by 
the  hundreds  of  thousands  that  they  will  have 
to  be  counted. 

But  no  matter  how  awful  the  carnage, 
there  will  be  conquerors  and  conquered.  The 
latter  will  nurse  vengeance  in  their  hearts. 
Does  the  Moscow  journalist  seriously  think 
that  after  the  hideous  butchery  of  the  future 
war,  passions  will  by  an  incomprehensible 
miracle  subside  forever?  No,  they  will  be 
livelier  than  ever.  After  each  defeat  hatred 
becomes  stronger  and  bitterer.  The  Ger- 
mans have  not  forgotten  the  burning  of  the 
Palatinate.  Then  what  is  the  meaning  of  the 
sentence,  "  Too  much  gall  has  gathered  to 
permit  disarmament "  ?     Ten  times  as  much 


\ 

A 


74  MORAL  EFFECTS 

gall  will  gather  after  another  war,  cruder 
than  all  preceding.  What  sort  of  a  future 
do  the  conservatives  dream  of?  Pitiless,  end- 
less bloodshed?  And  is  it  by  bloodshed  that 
they  count  upon  regenerating  the  human  race 
and  making  it  moral?  As  well  count  upon 
petroleum  to  extinguish  a  conflagration. 

To  sum  up,  war,  an  appeal  to  brute  force, 
is  always  a  degradation,  a  descent  into  the 
animalism  that  demoralizes  the  victors,  as 
well  as  the  vanquished. 


CHAPTER  IX 

SURVIVALS,  ROUTINE  IDEAS,  AND 
SOPHISTRIES 

It  is  necessary  to  kill  a  living  being  for 
food,  and  man  has  had  to  make  war  upon 
plants  and  animals.  Sometimes,  when  those 
sources  of  supply  failed  him,  he  attacked  his 
own  kind,  and  practised  cannibalism.  Some- 
times, too,  he  had  to  kill  in  order  not  to  be 
eaten  himself,  and  he  therefore  conducted 
long  wars  of  extermination  against  animals 
to  whom  he  might  serve  as  prey.  During  the 
period  of  the  struggle  for  food  massacre  is 
indispensable,  since  it  is  the  very  aim  and 
purpose  of  the  fight.  Now,  that  period 
lasted  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years,  dur- 
ing which  man  grew  accustomed  to  think  of 
killing  as  the  one  procedure  of  fight. 

Later,  when  foodstuffs  became  more  abun- 

75 


76      SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES 

dant  as  a  result  of  cattle-raising  and  agricul- 
ture, man  began  to  covet  the  possessions  of 
his  neighbors.  From  that  time  date  our  eco- 
nomic and  political  wars,  the  razzias,  the  per- 
manent tributes,  the  conquests.  Because  from 
the  remotest  periods  man  was  accustomed  to 
procure  food  by  war,  he  thought  war  the 
quickest  and  most  effective  way  of  increas- 
ing his  wealth.  The  day  came  when  needs 
of  an  intellectual  sort  asserted  themselves, 
and  since  all  men  could  not  think  alike,  dif- 
ferences of  opinion  arose.  As  a  result  of  an 
acquired  habit,  they  fancied  that  massacre 
was  the  best  means  of  conversion,  as  they 
had  thought  it  the  best  means  of  obtaining 
food. 

We  no  longer  share  the  delusions  of  our 
coarse  ancestors.  We  know  war  does  not 
enrich  the  victors,  we  know  we  cannot  work 
on  man's  conscience  by  material  means,  we 
know  that  in  order  to  combat  an  opinion  we 
must  set  up  another  opinion  in  opposition  to 
it.  We  know  all  that,  but,  alas!  the  ancient 
ideas  imbedded  in  our  brains  for  long  gen- 


SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES      77 

erations  are  not  easily  uprooted.  The  ineffi- 
cacy  of  war  for  settling  economic,  political, 
and  spiritual  questions  is  evident;  but  we  per- 
sist in  our  timeworn  ways,  and  continue  from 
tradition  to  use  that  method. 

In  reality  the  civilized  peoples  to-day  con- 
duct wars  simply  because  their  savage  an- 
cestors did  so  of  old.  There  is  no  other  rea- 
son. It  is  a  case  of  pure  atavism,  a  survival, 
a  routine.  From  sheer  spiritual  laziness  they 
will  not  abandon  their  accustomed  habits. 
Then,  because  the  idea  of  carrying  on  war 
without  any  motive  is  revolting  to  them,  they 
erect  theory  on  theory,  system  on  system  to 
justify  it. 

With  war  it  is  the  same  as  with  the  classic 
languages.  Latin  used  to  be  the  literary  and 
scientific  instrument  of  Europe.  People 
learned  it  for  the  same  reason  that  a  Celt 
in  Brittany  now  learns  French.  Greek  litera- 
ture contained  a  mine  of  delights  and  scien- 
tific information.  In  the  fifteenth  century 
Greek  was  studied  for  the  same  reason  that 
a  Russian  to-day  studies  French.    All  that  is 


78      SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES 

past,  but  the  routine  remains.  Averse  to 
change  our  old  methods  of  instruction,  we 
have  tried  to  justify  them  by  the  most  extraor- 
dinary sophistries.  Thus,  one  fine  day,  we 
discovered  that  the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin 
is  an  excellent  intellectual  exercise,  that  it  de- 
velops the  reasoning  faculty,  and  is  a  power- 
ful instrument  of  culture.  Of  old,  Greek 
and  Latin  were  means  to  an  end.  As  soon 
as  they  ceased  to  fulfil  that  function,  they 
were  raised  to  the  dignity  of  ends  in  them- 
selves. 

The  same  in  the  case  of  war.  For  centu- 
ries men  waged  war  to  acquire  wealth  and 
honor.  When  it  became  evident  that  war 
impoverished  the  victors  as  well  as  the  van- 
quished, the  most  remarkable  virtues  were 
ascribed  to  it.  Sophistries  fairly  rained  down 
— war  makes  nations  moral,  bloodshed  pre- 
vents intellectual  stagnation,  and  so  on.  It 
is  noteworthy  that  all  the  benefits  attributed 
to  war  were  discovered  after  the  event,  ex- 
actly when  public  opinion  turned  away  from 
it.     The  very  same  thing  happened  as  with 


SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES      79 

Latin.  When  the  study  of  Latin  became 
superfluous,  its  magical  virtues  were  dis- 
covered. 

Thus,  these  sophistries  ring  hollow  and  so 
can  ill  resist  criticism. 

War  is  analogous  to  crime,  and  crime  is 
a  desire  become  a  passion,  which  does  not 
recoil  even  before  murder.  If  crime  is  an 
evil,  why  should  war  be  a  good?  Murder 
is  war  between  individuals.  Unfortunately, 
private  murder,  it  is  to  be  feared,  will 
never  cease.  But  no  one  extols  it,  no  one 
discovers  in  it  a  means  for  making  people 
moral.  Similarly,  civil  wars  are  not  recom- 
mended, though  they,  too,  are  inevitable.  It 
is  simply  in  the  case  of  the  foreigner  that 
massacre  is  productive  of  all  the  virtues.  But 
that  word  foreigner  is  absolutely  conven- 
tional. In  the  fourteenth  century  the  in- 
habitants of  the  650  states  of  Germany  con- 
sidered one  another  foreigners.  A  prince  had 
two  sons,  and  divided  his  realm  between 
them.  Thenceforward  the  subjects  of  the 
elder  became  foreigners  to  the  subjects  of 


80      SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES 

the  younger.  If  the  prince  had  had  only 
one  son,  they  would  have  remained  compa- 
triots. Then,  how  can  collective  murder  be 
rendered  beneficial  by  a  mere  chance  of  suc- 
cession? Of  old,  the  Germans  of  Austria, 
the  Czechs,  and  the  Magyars  regarded  one 
another  as  foreigners.  In  1526  Ferdinand  I 
was  selected  king  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary, 
and  forthwith  those  races  became  fellow- 
countrymen.  To-day  the  French  and  the 
English  are  foreigners  to  each  other.  If  to- 
morrow it  would  please  them  to  form  a  po- 
litical union,  they  would  instantly  become 
compatriots.  Do  differences  in  language 
make  foreigners?  If  so,  a  Breton  would  not 
be  a  Frenchman.  There  is  not  a  single  great 
state  in  Europe  in  which  several  languages 
are  not  spoken,  languages  sometimes  widely 
remote  in  origin  from  one  another,  like  the 
Basque  and  the  Spanish.  The  Basque  is  not 
even  an  Aryan  tongue.  There  is  more  kin- 
ship between  Spanish  and  Russian  than  be- 
tween Spanish  and  Basque.  This  example 
shows  that  various  languages  may  be  spoken 


SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES      81 

without  the  compulsion  arising  for  men  to 
fall  upon  one  another  like  wild  beasts. 

I  repeat,  the  word  foreigner  is  purely  con- 
ventional, and  when  the  apologists  of  war 
assert  that  war  produces  all  the  virtues  be- 
cause it  is  waged  against  the  foreigner,  I 
ask,  then,  first  of  all  for  an  absolutely  clear 
and  precise  definition  of  that  word. 

With  war  it  is  the  same  as  with  another 
fallacy  of  the  human  mind,  protection.  If 
duties  increase  wealth,  why  not  establish 
them,  for  example,  between  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania  just  as  they  are  established  be- 
tween New  York  and  Germany?  Similarly, 
if  war  is  beneficial,  if  it  "  gives  men  the  op- 
portunity to  perform  feats  of  heroism,  self- 
denial,  and  devotion,"  why  not  wage  war  be- 
tween subjects  of  the  same  country?  Civil 
war  can  develop  all  those  virtues  as  well  as 
international  war. 

Now  let  us  consider  the  sophistries  of  the 
apologists  of  bloodshed  from  a  strictly  moral 
point  of  view. 

Folly,  crime,  and  vice  exist.     Therefore, 


82      SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES 

they  "  conform  to  the  order  of  things  estab- 
lished by  God,"  as  Von  Moltke  said.  Never- 
theless, nobody  delights  in,  nobody  honors, 
and  nobody  covers  with  blessings  folly,  crime, 
and  vice.  Nobody  tries  to  prove  that  they 
maintain  the  human  virtues.  On  the  contrary, 
people  try  to  fight  them  down  in  every  con- 
ceivable way.  X  does  not  succeed  in  con- 
vincing Y.  He  attacks  Y,  and  kills  him. 
We  consider  that  act  hideous  so  long  as  it 
occurs  between  individuals.  But  if  it  were 
a  collective  act,  we  should  fall  into  a  delirium 
of  admiration.  What  enthusiasm  the  cru- 
sades of  the  Spaniards  against  the  Moham- 
medans arouse  in  us ! 

War,  the  apologists  say,  evokes  heroism 
and  great  devotion.  They  do  not  perceive, 
in  arguing  in  that  way,  that  the  necessity  for 
heroism,  like  the  necessity  for  charity,  is 
highly  regrettable.  It  would  be  a  thousand 
times  better  if  all  men  were  rich  and  provi- 
dent and  never  had  need  of  help.  Who 
would  be  so  silly  as  to  recommend  that  each 
year  several  thousand  individuals  be  ruined 


SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES      83 

in  order  that  saintly  charity  should  have  the 
opportunity  to  perform  its  admirable  minis- 
trations? Has  any  one  ever  recommended 
that  cholera  or  diphtheria  germs  be  spread 
so  that  physicians  should  have  the  chance  to 
give  proof  of  their  devotion  to  humanity? 
What  fool  would  suggest  that  a  few  hundred 
houses  be  set  on  fire  every  year  for  the  fire- 
men to  be  able  to  show  their  heroism  and 
not  let  that  virtue  atrophy  among  them? 

Those  compassionate  persons  who  deprive 
themselves  of  many  joys  to  help  their  fel- 
low-men, the  Sisters  of  Charity,  the  physi- 
cians, the  firemen,  who  save  the  lives  of  oth- 
ers by  sometimes  sacrificing  their  own,  de- 
serve our  liveliest  gratitude  and  admiration. 
But  we  should  wish  that  they  never  had  the 
occasion  to  perform  their  services.  For  a 
long  time  we  have  been  doing  everything  to 
render  their  work  needless.  This  line  of  ar- 
gument unqualifiedly  applies  to  war.  The 
soldier  who  dies  for  his  country  commits  a 
most  praiseworthy  deed.  But  we  should  wish 
that  he  never  had  the  opportunity  to  do  so. 


84      SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES 

To  preach  war  in  order  to  secure  that  op- 
portunity to  him  is  folly,  pure  and  simple. 

Another  virtue  has  been  attributed  to  war, 
that  of  preventing  over-population.  Of  all 
the  sophistries  this  is  the  most  upside-down. 
A  woman  brings  a  child  into  the  world, 
suckles  him  at  her  breast,  rears  him  in  love. 
He  receives  a  good  education,  to  defray  the 
expenses  of  which  his  family  does  its  ut- 
most. At  the  age  of  twenty-one  he  and  the 
other  finest  young  men  of  the  generation  are 
chosen  for  war  and  sent  to  be  butchered  in 
order  to  prevent  over-population.  Is  not  that 
pure  madness?  If  we  actually  were  suffering 
from  over-population,  would  it  not  be  bet- 
ter to  abstain  from  having  children  than  to 
kill  off  the  flower  of  each  generation  in  that 
barbarous  fashion? 

Some  years  ago,  anarchists  threw  bombs 
in  several  European  cities.  They  said  they 
were  angry  at  our  rotten  society  and  would 
regenerate  it  with  dynamite.  What  chiefly 
outraged  the  world  in  theis  savage  deeds  is 
the    fact    that    innocent    persons    were    in- 


SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES      85 

jured.     But  war  has  always  had  the  same 
effect. 

Napoleon  III,  his  satellites,  his  low,  servile 
legislature  were  corruption  personified.  Ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Jahns,  Mr.  Valbert,  and  their 
like,  Sedan  was  a  means  of  regenerating  all 
of  them.1  But,  alas!  how  many  thousands 
of  victims,  the  bravest  men  in  the  land,  fell 
in  that  battle!  Peasants  who  had  worked 
from  morning  to  evening,  good  fathers  who 
had  loved  their  children,  who  had  econo- 
mized every  penny,  and  had  prepared  the 
true  greatness  of  the  country.  The  vulgar 
herd  of  courtiers,  who  had  instigated  the 
butcheries,  suffered  no  harm,  and  after  the 
signing  of  the  peace  they  again  took  up  their 
life  of  pleasure  and  dissipation.  That  is  how 
war  makes  the  people  moral.  It  sacrifices  the 
innocent,  and  spares  the  culpable.  If  the 
apologists  of  bloodshed  find  this  means  ef- 
ficacious, we  congratulate  them  upon  it  with 
perfect  sincerity. 

1Upon  the  mere  formulation  of  such  a  statement  we 
see  its  absolute  fallaciousness. 


86      SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES 

According  to  Mr.  Valbert,  if  it  depended 
upon  a  moralist  to  suppress  war,  he  might  hesi- 
tate perhaps.  Strange !  Why  not  say  the  same 
of  plagues,  epidemics,  cholera,  earthquakes, 
cyclones,  droughts  ?  There  is  not  a  man  alive 
in  his  good  senses,  the  most  ordinary  man, 
who  would  not,  if  he  could,  suppress  all  those 
evils  at  one  blow.  War  is  the  privileged 
plague.  While  we  curse  the  others,  we  bless 
war  and  find  great  virtues  in  it.  When  na- 
ture destroys  men  and  wealth,  we  deem  it  a 
calamity.  When  men  rabidly  annihilate  and 
impoverish  one  another  we  deem  it  a  fortu- 
nate event.  The  reader  may  say  I  am  ob- 
tuse, but  I  frankly  admit  I  am  utterly  in- 
capable of  grasping  that  point  of  view.  It 
is  the  same  with  war  as  with  protection. 
When  high  prices  are  natural,  they  are  an 
evil,  and  everything  is  done  to  fight  them. 
Roads,  canals,  railroads,  and  machines  of 
every  sort  are  constructed.  But  when  high 
prices  are  artificially  produced  by  customs 
duties,  they  are  considered  good. 

Let  any  one  who  wishes  explain  such  cu- 


SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES      87 

rious  logic.  As  for  myself  I  am  completely 
at  a  loss.  With  my  natural  candor  I 
aver  I  have  a  very  individual  way  of  re- 
garding the  plagues  that  torment  humanity. 
We  may  call  upon  the  earth  not  to  quake, 
the  volcanoes  not  to  belch  their  lava,  the 
winds  not  to  blow  away  the  fertilizing  rain- 
clouds.  But  to  what  purpose?  Cruel  na- 
ture is  deaf  to  our  adjurations.  So  we  bow 
our  heads  and  patiently  endure  the  inevitable 
scourges.  But  when  scourges  are  produced 
by  creatures  endowed  with  reason,  who  could 
perfectly  well  prevent  the  infliction  of  them, 
I  can  only  feel  thoroughly  indignant  and  dis- 
gusted. Yes,  forsooth,  war  deserves  a  privi- 
leged place  among  the  plagues  that  torment 
humanity,  but  a  place  at  the  very  opposite 
end  from  the  one  it  has  been  assigned.  It 
should  be  a  hundred  times  more  execrated 
than  drought,  or  cholera,  or  tuberculosis,  be- 
cause on  the  very  day  we  take  measures  to 
suppress  it,  it  will  disappear. 

Civil  law  punishes  instigation  to  murder. 
Those  who  vaunt  the  benefits  of  war  insti- 


88      SURVIVALS  AND  SOPHISTRIES 

gate  to  murder.  Without  doubt,  they  do  so 
in  good  faith,  and  we  do  not  ask  the  law  to 
punish  them.  But  they  are  vicious  persons 
and  should  be  pinned  in  the  pillory  of  pub- 
lic opinion,  exposed  to  execration  and  shame. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR 

The  external  world  produces  sensations  in 
us  which  in  our  nerve  centers  turn  into  per- 
ceptions, images,  ideas,  sentiments,  desires, 
and  passions.  When  the  phase  of  desire  is 
reached,  an  action  generally  takes  place. 
In  the  phase  of  desire  the  mind  is  for  a  time 
still  master  of  itself.  It  chooses  its  means, 
takes  present  attendant  circumstances  into 
consideration  (for  instance,  the  interests  of 
human  beings),  or  future  circumstances  an- 
ticipated. But  if  the  external  sensation 
reaches  the  phase  of  passion,  the  mind  is  car- 
ried away  completely  and  annuls  all  resist- 
ance. Then  man,  in  order  to  realize  a  de- 
sired end,  recoils  before  no  means,  not  even 
the  sacrifice  of  his  fellow-beings.     To  kill  is 

both  an  individual  and  a  collective  act — in 

89 


9o        THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR 

the  first  case  being  called  murder;  in  the  sec- 
ond, war. 

There  are  three  critical  moments  in  a  mur- 
der— the  desire,  whatever  it  may  be;  the  con- 
viction that  the  desire  can  be  realized  only 
by  a  man's  death,  and  the  accomplishment  of 
the  deed. 

The  same  phases  exist  in  collective  mur- 
der— a  lust  for  something  enkindled  in  a 
group  (the  desire  to  acquire  wealth,  land, 
honors,  and  so  on),  the  conviction  that 
the  end  desired  can  be  attained  only  by 
battles,  and,  finally,  the  commencement  of 
hostilities. 

But  in  collective  murder  matters  are  con- 
siderably complicated.  Each  man  at  each 
instant  has  his  own  special  desires.  To  pro- 
duce an  act  in  common  those  desires  must  be 
co-ordinated.  Hence  the  initiative  of  an  in- 
dividual is  indispensable  to  the  origin  of 
every  collective  act.  A  man  conceives  an  un- 
dertaking for  spoliation.  He  looks  about  for 
companions  to  help  him.  He  becomes  the 
head  of  a  band  and  recruits  troops  for  a  mili- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR       91 

tary  expedition.  During  a  certain  phase  of 
society  war  is  always  a  private  affair. 

But  how  is  it  that  the  chief  always  finds 
companions?  Every  living  creature  dreads 
death.  How  is  it  that  persons  will  expose 
themselves  to  it  quite  willingly?  Here  an- 
other factor  enters,  hope.  Each  person  be- 
fore a  fight  knows  that  inevitably  somfc  will 
fall,  even  among  the  victors.  But  who  will 
fall?  Each  man  thinks  his  fellows  will,  not 
himself,  and  so  enlists  under  the  standard  of 
the  chief.  In  other  words,  he  does  not  sac- 
rifice his  life,  but  risks  it  for  the  sake  of 
obtaining  certain  advantages.  If  volunteers 
were  all  as  certain  of  being  killed  as  a  con- 
vict is  of  being  executed,  the  number  of  wars 
would  be  infinitely  less. 

When  the  modern  states  were  organized 
and  the  standing  armies  established,  wars 
ceased  to  be  private  enterprises.  The  right 
to  declare  war  became  the  monopoly  of  the 
governments. 

Far-reaching  changes  then  took  place  in 
the  play  of  interests.     The  soldier  who  had 


92        THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR 

quite  voluntarily  enrolled  under  a  chief's 
standard  had  had  the  consciousness  of  advan- 
tages to  be  derived  from  doing  so.  He  some- 
times stipulated  in  advance  what  the  advan- 
tages should  be.  But  when  war  came  to  be 
monopolized  by  the  heads  of  a  state,  the  ad- 
vantages to  a  soldier  ceased  to  be  apparent.1 
To  get  men  to  decide  to  fight  it  is  necessary 
to  employ  an  amount  of  complex  measures 
which  Tolstoy  very  accurately  describes  as 
the  hypnotization  of  the  masses.  A  number 
of  institutions — the  Church,  the  school,  and 
many  others — lay  hold  of  a  man  when  he 
leaves  the  cradle,  and  impress  certain  special 
ideas  upon  him.  He  is  made  to  believe  that 
it  is  to  his  interest  to  be  ready  at  any  mo- 
ment to  throw  himself  upon  his  fellow-beings 
and  massacre  them.  He  is  made  to  believe 
that  his  happiness  is  in  direct  ratio  to  the  size 
of  the  state.  One  of  the  most  effectual  ways 
of  keeping  up  the  military  spirit  is  to  repre- 

1  Because  they  no  longer  exist  in  reality.  Some  in- 
dividuals may  derive  benefits  from  a  war,  but  entire 
nations  never.  On  this  point  see  my  Gaspillages,  chap- 
ter xiii. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR       93 

sent  to  people  that  they  are  always  on  the 
defensive  and  their  neighbors  alone  are  ag- 
gressors. That  illusion  has  taken  hold  of 
all  the  nations. 

A  few  examples: — Several  years  ago  an 
anonymous  writer  very  clearly  showed  the 
French  point  of  view  in  an  article  in  the 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  of  February  1, 
1894,  La  paix  armee  et  ses  consequences. 
"  In  1 863,"  the  writer  says,  "Europe  was 
happy.  It  seemed  to  be  on  the  eve  of  the 
era  of  international  fraternity.  People  saw 
the  time  when  all  the  nations  of  Europe 
would  vow  unalterable  affection  for  one  an- 
other. The  state  of  things  was  truly  idyllic.1 
But  Bismarck  appeared!  He  treacherously 
attacked  Denmark,  next  Austria,  and  finally 
France.  Then  Europe  became  an  armed 
camp,  a  mine  of  dynamite.     Farewell  to  the 

1  One  fact  will  show  how  fanciful  this  picture  is.  At 
that  time  a  number  of  French  patriots  were  dreaming 
of  the  conquest  of  the  Rhine  frontier  lands.  Ger- 
many and  Belgium  were  living  in  a  state  of  perpetual 
fright.  The  hegemony  of  France  under  Napoleon  III 
weighed  as  heavily  as  that  of  Prussia  to-day. 


94        THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR 

beautiful  dreams  of  love!  Farewell  to  the 
idyll !  Prussia,  whose  '  national  industry  is 
war,'  was  the  great  disturber  of  peace,  the 
great  criminal." 

Let  us  cross  the  Rhine  into  Germany. 
Here  we  hear  a  different  tune.  "  We  Ger- 
mans are  the  most  peaceable  people  in  the 
world.  We  do  not  want  to  take  anybody's 
land  [except  Alsace-Lorraine].  If  it  de- 
pended upon  us,  Europe  would  be  enjoying 
absolute  peace.  But,  then,  there's  the  Gallic 
Cock  and  the  Russian  Bear.  Neither  will 
keep  quiet,  and  we  are  forced  every  year  to 
equip  new  regiments."  Some  time  ago  a  Ger- 
man author  showed  that  France  was  the  eter- 
nal obstacle  to  disarmament,  and  he  proposed 
to  divide  it  into  several  states  forming  a  fed- 
eration.1 In  that  event  alone  could  our  un- 
fortunate continent  finally  draw  its  breath  in 
peace. 

The  author  of  a  pamphlet  published  in 

1The  clever  journalist  forgets  "to  light  his  lantern," 
like  the  monkey  in  the  fable.  He  does  not  once  stop  to 
consider  whether  the  French  would  consent  to  such  a 
combination. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR       95 

Germany *  asks  if  peace  is  possible  in  Europe 
so  long  as  a  Russia  exists.  Many  Germans  de- 
clare that  in  order  to  obtain  peace  the  bar- 
barous Muscovites  must  be  thrust  back  to  the 
steppes  of  Siberia.2 

Now  let  us  cross  the  Niemen.  "  We  are 
gentleness  personified,"  say  the  Russians. 
"  But  the  road  to  Constantinople  leads 
through  Berlin.  Germany  prevents  us  from 
accomplishing  our  historic  mission.  Through 
sheer  jealousy  it  thwarts  the  realization  of 
our  national  program,  and  infringes  upon  our 
most  sacred  rights.  It  is  Germany  that  at- 
tacks, we  merely  defend  ourselves." 

Thus,  everywhere  we  see  the  same  thing. 
Each  nation  imagines  itself  to  be  the  per- 
sonification of  virtue.  Each  nation,  as  Mr. 
Jahns  would  have  it,  pretends  it  wages  none 
but  defensive  wars. 

It  is  time  to  eradicate  such  fatal  errors. 
The  great  European  nations  should  subject 

1  Was  will  das  Volk?    Weder  Krieg  noch  Militarismus. 

2  To  obtain  this  result  it  would  be  necessary  to  form 
a  European  federation  without  Russia.  The  Germans,  we 
must   realize,   would   hardly   take   that  step. 


96        THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR 

their  consciences  to  a  severe  examination. 
They  would  then  perceive  that  they  are  all 
equally  violent  and  equally  brutal.1  The  pol- 
icy of  each  one  of  them  prevents  the  happi- 
ness of  millions  of  human  beings. 

No,  our  neighbor  is  not  the  sole  aggressor. 
We,  too,  are  aggressors.  It  is  not  true  that 
we  confine  ourselves  to  self-defense.  No,  we 
violate  the  rights  of  others,  just  as  others 
violate  our  rights. 

When  these  truths  will  have  penetrated 
into  the  minds  of  the  masses,  militarism  will 
have  seen  its  last  days.  At  present,  in  fact, 
war  can  possess  advantages — I  refer,  also, 
even  to  purely  imaginary  advantages — for 
only  a  very  small  number  of  individuals.  If 
the  masses  agree  to  wage  war,  it  is  because 
they  think  it  is  simply  a  defensive  war.  Dis- 
pel that  illusion,  and  no  one  would  go  to 
battle. 

The  people  hate  war.    There  is  not  a  man 


1  Except  France  at  present.  In  demanding  a  plebiscite 
in  Alsace-Lorraine  the  French  merely  upheld  their  rights 
and  made  no  attack  upon  the  rights  of  any  one  else. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR       97 

in  ten  thousand  who  would  willingly,  for 
pleasure,  enter  a  campaign.  This  has  always 
been  so.  To  be  sure,  the  Romans  may  be 
considered  to  have  been  a  warlike  nation. 
Augustus  was  the  first  to  close  the  Temple  of 
Janus.  But  even  in  the  time  of  the  Repub- 
lic the  vacatio  militaris,  exemption  from  mili- 
tary service,  was  granted  as  a  reward.  Be- 
ginning with  Marius,  conscription  (dilectus) 
had  to  be  given  up.  The  rich  refused  to 
serve.  So,  we  see,  war  was  dreaded  even  by 
the  most  warlike  people  on  earth.  In  the 
early  middle  ages  all  free  men  were  soldiers. 
But,  it  seems,  that  did  not  greatly  amuse  them, 
because  after  the  fifteenth  century  standing 
armies  had  to  be  created.  If  war  had  been  a 
pleasure,  men  would  have  been  enthusiastic  to 
rally  about  the  royal  standards.  That  such 
was  not  the  case  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
conscription  was  introduced. 

As  for  modern  times,  it  may  be  stated 
without  fear  of  error  that  from  the  Ural 
Mountains  to  the  Atlantic,  the  Europeans 
have  the  utmost  horror  of  conscription  and 


98        THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR 

war.  Nobody  would  consent  to  be  a  soldier 
if  he  were  not  certain  of  being  punished  for 
refusing  to  serve.  It  is  less  vexatious  to  be 
a  soldier  in  England  than  anywhere  else ;  yet, 
since  the  Crimean  War,  "  the  average  num- 
ber of  deserters  from  the  English  army  has 
never  been  less  than  one-fifth  of  the  recruits. 
Sometimes  as  many  as  one-half  have  de- 
serted." * 

No  person  on  awaking  in  the  morning 
thinks  of  going  to  break  his  fellow-men's 
heads.  A  man  merely  tries  to  increase  his 
prosperity  according  to  his  ability.  I  can 
give  material  proof  of  this.  Have  we  ever 
seen  a  people  petition  for  war?  They  accept 
it  because  they  think  it  inevitable,  but  they 
always  go  against  their  will. 

Thanks  to  the  perfected  organization  of 
modern  societies,  an  order  emanating  from 
the  cabinet  can  in  a  few  hours  set  a  nation 
of  100,000,000  souls  astir.  Sometimes  or- 
ders are  given  odious  to  the  great  majority  of 

*E.   Reclus,   Nouvelle  geographie   universelle,  vol.   iii, 
p.  881, 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR       99 

citizens,  who  nevertheless  obey  them  as  a  re- 
sult of  social  reflexes.  The  custom  of  obey- 
ing the  head  of  the  state  has  become  so  much  a 
matter  of  second  nature  that  the  idea  of  re- 
sistance has  completely  disappeared. 

The  social  organization  permits  certain  in- 
dividuals, very  few  in  number,  to  decide  the 
fate  of  the  largest  states.  To  obtain  mate- 
rial advantages  or  to  satisfy  their  self-love, 
those  individuals  sometimes  bring  about  the 
bloodiest  wars.  Assuredly  the  French  never 
had  a  thought  of  making  the  expedition  into 
Russia  in  1812.1  But  Napoleon  wanted  it. 
The  German  producers  and  laborers  cer- 
tainly never  thought  of  invading  France  in 
1870.  But  the  three  boon  companions — 
Moltke,  Von  Roon,  and  Bismarck — wanted 
to  invade  France. 

A  happy  combination  of  circumstances  has 
been  produced  and  still  exists.  No  minister 
is  great  enough  to  create  his  own  policy.  The 

1  The  intention  to  wage  this  war  was  kept  a  secret. 
When  the  emperor  left  Paris  to  begin  the  campaign,  the 
Moniteur  merely  announced  that  he  was  going  to  inspect 
the  Grande  Armee,  then  assembled  at  the  Vistula. 


ioo      THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR 

monarchs  of  the  large  European  nations  are 
too  imbued  with  humanitarian  sentiments  to 
start  the  most  awful  wars  in  order  to  expe- 
rience some  of  those  delicious  emotions  that 
victory  bestows.  None  of  them  is  selfish 
enough  to  inflict  horrible  sufferings  upon  mil- 
lions of  human  beings  for  the  satisfaction  of 
his  self-love.1 

Since  neither  the  people  nor  the  monarchs 
desire  war,  it  would  seem  that  the  nations 
could  disarm  and  form  the  United  States  of 
Europe.  Why  do  they  not?  There  is  only 
one  reason,  but  that  a  powerful  one — ROU- 
TINE, convention. 

This,  I  know,  will  seem  paradoxical  to 
many  of  my  readers.  But  it  is  upon  mature 
reflection  that  I  am  led  to  propound  that 
proposition,  and  I  think,  sooner  or  later,  it 
will  be  accepted  by  all  enlightened  minds. 

Yes,  alas !    War  will  be  waged  in  the  fu- 

1  Emperor  William  II  said  to  Jules  Simon  in  March, 
I890:  "Your  army  is  prepared.  It  has  made  great 
progress.  .  .  .  That  is  why  I  should  regard  any  one 
who  would  drive  the  two  nations  to  war  as  a  simpleton 
or   a  criminal," 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WAR      101 

ture  simply  because  it  was  waged  in  the  past. 
The  future  battles  of  the  Europeans  will  be 
frightful  holocausts  offered  to  SAINT 
ROUTINE. 

At  present  many  questions  are  still  unde- 
cided. But  every  man  endowed  with  ordi- 
nary common  sense  understands  perfectly 
well  that  they  can  be  settled  without  the  least 
difficulty  by  arbitration  or  the  plebiscite.  If 
we  reject  these  means  and  prefer  battle,  we 
do  so,  I  repeat,  for  only  one  reason — because 
in  the  same  circumstances  our  ancestors  de- 
clared war,  and  we  have  to  do  the  same  that 
they  did.  Our  ancestors  considered  it  shame- 
ful to  give  a  country  its  independence  with- 
out shedding  blood.  So  we  must  also  con- 
sider it  shameful.  A  still  small  voice  cries 
to  us  from  every  corner  that  it  is  not  shame- 
ful, that  the  oppression  of  foreign  nations  is 
shameful,  base,  contrary  to  our  interests.  Yet 
we  stifle  that  blessed  voice  of  healthy  rea- 
son to  listen  to  the  voice  of  our  preferred 
fetich,  SAINT  ROUTINE. 


CHAPTER  XI 

WAR  CONSIDERED  AS  THE  SOLE 
FORM  OF  STRUGGLE 

The  apologists  of  war  are  quite  right  in 
this,  that  struggle  is  life.  Struggle  is  the  ac- 
tion of  the  environment  upon  the  organism 
and  the  reaction  of  the  organism  upon  the 
environment,  therefore  a  perpetual  combat. 
Absolute  peace  would  be  the  suppression  of 
that  motion:  that  is,  it  would  be  a  pure  ab- 
straction, since  matter  is  one  and  the  same 
thing  as  motion,  or  dynamics,  and  we  distin- 
guish between  them  by  a  subjective  operation 
of  the  mind. 

Man  will  cease  to  struggle  the  day  his  de- 
sires cease,  which  is  tantamount  to  saying  the 
day  he  dies.  As  soon  as  conflict  stops,  stag- 
nation and  death  set  in.  "  Cemeteries  are 
really  the  one  place  in  the  world  where  per- 
petual peace  reigns."  * 

1  Valbert,  ibid.,  p.  69a. 
102 


WAR  AS  SOLE  FORM  OF  STRUGGLE    103 

Without  struggle  and  antagonisms  socie- 
ties would  indeed  fall  into  a  state  of  som- 
nolency, of  most  dangerous  lethargy.  That 
is  perfectly  true,  but  the  great  mistake  con- 
sists in  considering  war  the  sole  form  in  which 
humanity's  struggle  manifests  itself. 

Confusions  of  the  same  sort  are  numerous. 
The  most  eminent  philosophers  declare  that 
some  day  the  universe  will  reach  absolute 
equilibrium.  That  state  of  things  is  repre- 
sented as  the  absence  of  all  motion.  Now, 
equilibrium  merely  signifies  constancy  of  the 
trajectories.  If  to-morrow  the  earth  began 
to  revolve  at  the  rate  of  50  kilometres  a 
second,  the  day  after  at  the  rate  of  10  kilo- 
metres, and  the  third  day  at  the  rate  of  100 
kilometres,  the  solar  system  would  be  in  a 
state  of  non-equilibrium.  But  if  it  continues 
to  revolve  with  its  normal  velocity  of  29 
kilometres  per  second,  the  system  remains  in 
equilibrium.  Equilibrium  may  be  a  quality 
of  any  degree  of  velocity,  no  matter  how 
great. 

Similarly,  the  most  heated  conflicts  may 


104    WAR  AS  SOLE  FORM  OF  STRUGGLE 

agitate  humanity.  Activity,  feverish  doings 
may  go  on  everywhere  all  the  time,  every 
moment  of  the  day,  and  yet  it  is  unnecessary 
for  men  to  kill  one  another  on  fields  of  bat- 
tle, like  wild  beasts.  It  is  easy  to  demon- 
strate that  the  intensity  of  motion  would  be 
in  direct  ratio  to  the  infrequency  of  blood- 
shed. In  fact,  war  produces  anarchy  and  dis- 
order, which  bring  on  intellectual  stagnation, 
and  intellectual  stagnation  is  the  mini- 
mum of  cerebral  motion,  or  cerebral  dy- 
namics. In  a  state  of  order  and  justice — 
that  is,  in  a  state  of  peace — the  mind  soars 
on  its  highest  flights;  which  means  that  the 
velocity  of  cerebral  action  increases. 

The  main  error,  then,  arises  in  a  confusion 
of  war  with  struggle,  whereas  war  is  merely 
a  means,  a  procedure  for  attaining  certain 
ends.  Now,  this  truth  long  ago  took  form  in 
customary  modes  of  expression,  in  which  the 
loftiest  intellectual  speculations  of  a  given 
community  manifest  themselves. 

I  shall  take  a  few  phrases  at  random,  the 
first    my    eyes    fall    upon.      "  When    Mr, 


WAR  AS  SOLE  FORM  OF  STRUGGLE    105 

Casimir-Perier  descends  from  the  tribune,  the 
government  will  have  won  the  battle,  and 
Mr.  Millerand  will  enter  only  to  cover  the 
retreat."  *  Speaking  of  the  government  of 
the  radicals,  Mr.  de  Marcere  says  that  "  it 
produced  in  the  relations  between  the  citizens 
and  the  state,  or  between  the  representatives 
of  the  state  and  the  citizens,  and  even  among 
families,  a  condition  of  intestine  war  and  an 
unwillingness  to  make  mutual  concessions, 
which  caused  France  to  resemble  a  multitude 
of  hostile  camps."  2  Recently  Mr.  Philippe 
Gill  published  a  book  entitled  La  bataille 
litterahe  ("The  Literary  Battle  ").  "  Each 
chapter  deals  with  one  of  the  forms  of  the 
struggle  in  which  we  take  part — the  fight  of 
the  idealists  against  the  naturalists,  the  fight 
of  the  spiritualists  against  the  romanticists, 
of  paradox  against  reason."  3  The  reader 
knows  without  my  saying  so  that  in  all  the 
contests  mentioned  in  these  quotations  not  a 
single  drop  of  blood  was  shed. 

1  Journal   des  Debats,  May  9,   1894. 

2  Nouvelle  Revue,  May  i,  1894,  p.  8. 
z  Ibid.,  May  15,   1894,  P-  453* 


106    WAR  AS  SOLE  FORM  OF  STRUGGLE 

Twenty  times  a  day  we  use  similar  expres- 
sions. What  does  that  show?  Simply  that 
the  wisdom  of  the  nations  long  ago  discov- 
ered the  elementary  truth  that  war  aiming  at 
the  conquest  of  territory  is  not  the  sole  form 
of  struggle  in  human  groups.  It  takes  on 
a  great  number  of  other  forms.  But,  the 
reader  will  say,  your  axiom  is  the  asses' 
bridge.  Exactly.  That  is  the  very  point  I 
wished  to  reach.  Is  it  not  strange  that  so 
simple  an  idea,  one  so  widely  spread,  should 
not  have  struck  the  apologists  of  war? 

The  idea  of  diversity  in  struggle  is  as  trite 
as  the  idea  of  the  division  of  labor.  Division 
of  labor  began  in  the  remotest  periods,  in 
the  age  of  stone,  when  man  went  hunting  and 
marauding,  and  woman  cooked.  Besides, 
man  need  merely  look  upon  his  own  body  to 
see  division  of  labor  practised  on  an  immense 
scale.  The  hands  and  feet  perform  distinctly 
different  functions.  The  ears  cannot  see, 
nor  the  eyes  hear.  All  that  should  be  sug- 
gestive, should  it  not?  Nevertheless,  the 
first  thinker  who  realized  the  importance  of 


WAR  AS  SOLE  FORM  OF  STRUGGLE    107 

division  of  labor  and  studied  it  scientifically 
was  Adam  Smith  in  the  second  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Thus,  a  fact  observed 
thousands  and  thousands  of  times  in  the 
course  of  ages  was  not  fully  comprehended 
and  did  not  become  part  of  our  con- 
scious thought  until  the  year  1776  of  our 
era. 

Man  is  a  very  complex  being.  He  feels 
the  need  for  food,  the  desire  to  reproduce, 
he  feels  economic,  political,  intellectual,  and 
moral  needs.  Each  of  these  needs  impels 
him  to  act.  When  he  encounters  resistance, 
arising  either  from  his  physical  environment 
or  from  causes  of  a  different  sort,  or  from 
his  fellow-men,  he  feels  like  overcoming 
them.  To  do  so  most  rapidly  and  effectu- 
ally, the  employment  of  different  methods  is 
expedient,  work,  violence,  persuasion,  etc. 

Now,  the  routine  thinkers  of  the  school  of 
Mr.  Jahns  and  Mr.  Valbert  do  not  under- 
stand that  elementary  truth.  They  fancy 
that  the  one  struggle  there  is  in  society  aims 
at  the  annexation  of  one's  neighbor's  lands, 


108    WAR  AS  SOLE  FORM  OF  STRUGGLE 

and  that  the  sole  method  of  fighting  is  to 
murder  on  battlefields. 

Such  narrow-mindedness  is  all  the  more  as- 
tonishing in  the  French  author,  because  his 
country  is  now  a  center  of  extremely  heated 
contests  which  are  not  carried  on  by  the 
method  of  butchery.  In  the  first  place,  there 
is  the  economic  struggle,  which  Socialism 
has  made  so  serious.  Then  there  is  the 
conflict  of  free  thought  with  the  Catholic 
Church,  which  assumed  so  acute  a  form 
under  the  radical  government.  Finally, 
there  is  the  question  of  assimilating  the 
12,000,000  Languedocians,  Flemings,  Celts, 
etc.,  with  the  dominant  nationality.  In  Al- 
geria, besides,  the  French  are  striving  to 
Gallicize  the  Arabs.  How  is  it  that  Mr. 
Valbert  does  not  see  all  those  facts? 

Conquest,  then,  is  not  the  sole  object  of 
struggle,  and  war  is  not  the  one  method.  It 
may  even  be  said  that  war,  or  murder,  is  not 
really  effectual  except  in  the  physiological,  or 
food,  struggle.  X  is  hungry.  He  can  find 
no  food.     He  throws  himself  upon  Y,  and 


WAR  AS  SOLE  FORM  OF  STRUGGLE    109 

kills  and  eats  him.  That  is  a  cruel,  but  a 
rational  act.  If  we  did  not  wage  war  upon 
the  vegetables  and  animals,  if  we  did  not 
murder  them,  it  would  be  impossible  for  us 
to  live.  But  once  the  physiologic  stage  has 
been  passed,  war  is  an  ineffectual  method. 
The  economic  struggle  has  wealth  for  its  ob- 
ject. As  soon  as  wrar  is  employed,  so  far 
from  increasing  we  diminish  wealth.  The 
aim  of  the  intellectual  struggle  is  to  lead 
other  men  to  think  like  myself.  As  soon  as 
war  is  used  as  a  method  of  conviction,  so  far 
from  hastening  we  retard  the  spread  of 
ideas.1 

When  the  idea  of  the  diversity  of  social 
struggles  will  have  formed  part  of  our  con- 
scious thought,  when  it  will  have  become 
public  property,  men  will  be  amazed  to  see 
how  it  remained  unrecognized  so  long.  Alas ! 
the  asses'  bridges  are  sometimes  the  hardest 
to  cross.     We  may  say  that  all  scientific  en- 

1The  limitations  of  the  present  work  do  not  allow  of 
the  elaboration  of  this  point.  I  refer  the  reader  to  my 
Luttes  entre  societes  humaines. 


no    WAR  AS  SOLE  FORM  OF  STRUGGLE 

deavor  is  directed  toward  bringing  certain 
truths  to  be  classed  among  those  of  the  cele- 
brated Monsieur  de  La  Palisse. 

La  Palisse  lacked  prosperity, 

He  barely  kept  alive. 

But  when  he  had  things  in  plenty, 

He  then  began  to  thrive. 

That  seems  undeniable,  does  it  not?  I 
shall  proceed  to  present  to  the  reader  an- 
other, still  more  amazing  truth,  also  unrec- 
ognized for  thousands  of  years  and  still  de- 
nied by  a  very  large  number  of  people, 
u  wealth  cannot  be  increased  by  being  de- 
stroyed." Most  assuredly  Monsieur  de  La 
Palisse  would  turn  in  his  grave  if  he  heard 
this.  As  I  showed  in  a  previous  chapter, 
within  historic  times  man  destroyed  the  value 
of  $800,000,000,000,  always  in  the  delusion 
that  the  destruction  would  increase  his 
wealth.  If  men  were  only  to  regulate  their 
conduct  according  to  La  Palisse's  truth,  that 
wealth  cannot  be  increased  by  destroying  it, 
nobody  would  again  wage  a  war  of  conquest, 
since  men  would  understand  that  wars  im- 


WAR  AS  SOLE  FORM  OF  STRUGGLE    in 

poverish  the  victors  as  well  as  the  vanquished. 
When  will  that  happy  moment  come? 

The  same  conditions  prevail  in  the  other 
human  struggles.  They  have  many  objects, 
and  the  effectualness  of  methods  of  fighting 
vary  according  to  the  end  in  view.  When 
men  adjust  their  conduct  to  that  elementary 
truth,  the  face  of  the  world  will  be  com- 
pletely changed. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE 

Darwin's  genius  produced  a  profound 
revolution  in  all  the  sciences.  A  veil  fell 
from  before  our  eyes.  Facts  observed  for 
centuries  over  and  over  again  were  for  the 
first  time  interpreted  in  a  scientific  way.  We 
saw  that  each  tree,  each  blade  of  grass  fights 
with  its  neighbor  for  the  nourishing  elements 
of  the  earth  and  the  sun's  light.  We  realized 
that  each  insect,  each  animal  can  live  only  by 
destroying  other  living  beings.  The  idea  of 
struggle  was  soon  transferred  from  biologic 
phenomena  to  all  others.  We  saw  that  strug- 
gle was  the  universal  law  of  nature.  Atoms 
contend  with  one  another  to  form  chemical 
substances.  The  nebulae  and  the  stars  vie 
for  the  matter  spread  in  the  celestial  spheres. 
The  cells  of  our  body  are  engaged  without 

112 


THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE    113 

cease  in  a  furious  conflict.  The  ideas  in  our 
brain  struggle  for  ascendency  one  over  the 
other.  In  short,  we  find  tension  and  effort, 
the  manifestation  of  eternal  energy,  every- 
where. Through  Darwin  our  conception  of 
the  universe  has  been  entirely  changed.  From 
something  static  it  has  become  dynamic. 

As  every  political  reaction  runs  beyond 
its  goal,  so  every  new  theory  leads  some 
minds  too  far  in  one  direction.  The  truer  it 
is,  the  more  impetuous  its  current.  It  sub- 
merges everything.  It  prevents  us  from  tak- 
ing account  of  certain  phenomena  which  are 
of  the  utmost  importance. 

Social  phenomena  are  not  absolutely  iden- 
tical with  biologic  phenomena.  They  present 
a  number  of  new  factors  not  to  be  neglected. 
Because  massacre  is  the  method  most  fre- 
quently employed  in  the  struggles  between  ani- 
mal species,  it  does  not  necessarily  follow  that 
it  must  be  employed  by  the  human  species, 
too.  Besides  the  physiological  struggle,  hu- 
manity has  economic,  political,  and  intellec- 
tual struggles,  which  do  not  exist  among  ani- 


ii4    THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE 

mals.  It  may  even  be  stated  that  the  physio- 
logical struggle,  the  dominant  form  in  the 
animal  kingdom,  has  ended  among  men,  since 
they  no  longer  eat  one  another. 

This  is  something  that  certain  theorists 
have  not  understood.  Fascinated  by  the  Dar- 
winian ideas,  they  have  accepted  them  blindly 
without  perceiving  the  modifications  they  un- 
dergo in  the  social  environment. 

The  "  Origin  of  Species  "  was  first  pub- 
lished in  1859.  A  few  years  later,  thanks  to 
the  appearance  of  the  great  political  "  gen- 
ius," Bismarck,  Europe  underwent  a  period 
of  comparative  barbarization.  That  narrow- 
minded  Prussian  provincial,  stony-hearted 
and  ambitious  as  Napoleon,  adored  nothing 
but  brute  force.  He  knew  of  no  other  way 
to  fight  than  with  the  sword.  He  proclaimed 
that  the  bayonet  exceeds  the  law  and  that 
everything  in  the  world  should  be  accom- 
plished by  blood  and  iron.  His  prestige  in 
Germany  was  immense.  He  was  idolized  like 
a  demi-god.  The  tokens  of  servile  adulation 
with  which  he  was  overwhelmed  in  his  coun- 


THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE    115 

try  show  better  than  anything  else  the  degra- 
dation of  a  vast  number  of  the  German 
people. 

Darwin  incorrectly  interpreted  on  the  one 
side,  and  Bismarck's  prestige  on  the  other, 
combined  to  produce  a  new  school  of  theo- 
rists who  have  remade  history  after  their 
fashion.  In  order  to  undertake  an  investi- 
gation, men  must  necessarily  have  a  precon- 
ceived idea.  As  a  result  they  see  things  not 
as  they  actually  are,  but  as  they  would  have 
them.  That  is  why  the  confirmation  of  the 
oddest  systems  hatched  by  the  most  grotesque 
imaginations  is  read  into  history. 

A  professor  of  the  University  of  Gratz, 
Mr.  Gumplowicz,  in  1883,  published  a  work 
entitled  Der  Rassenkampf  ("  Race  Wars  "), 
in  which  the  tendencies  of  the  theorists  of 
brute  force  are  very  clearly  shown  up.  Ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Gumplowicz,  mankind  has  a 
polygenist  origin.  Each  race  comes  from  a 
distinct  stock.  Consequently,  antagonism  and 
hatred  have  always  existed  among  the  human 
races,  and  will  continue  to  divide  them  to  the 


u6    THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE 

end  of  time.  "  The  perpetual  struggle  of 
the  races  is  the  law  of  history,"  Mr.  Gumplo- 
wicz  concludes,  "  while  perpetual  peace  is 
nothing  but  the  dream  of  the  idealists."  A 
disciple  of  his,  Mr.  Ratzenhofer,  condenses 
his  theory  to  a  single  proposition,  "  The  con- 
tact of  two  hordes  produces  rage  and  terror. 
They  throw  themselves  upon  one  another  in 
a  fight  to  exterminate,  or  else  they  avoid 
contact."  x 

Until  now  it  was  believed  that  men  fought 
their  fellows  in  order  to  obtain  food,  women, 
wealth,  the  profits  derived  from  the  posses- 
sion of  the  government,  or  in  order  to  impose 
a  religion  or  a  type  of  culture.  In  all  these 
circumstances  war  is  a  means  to  an  end.  The 
new  theorists  proclaim  that  this  is  all  wrong. 
Men  must  of  necessity  massacre  one  an- 
other because  of  polygeny.  Savage  car- 
nage is  a  law  of  nature,  operating  through 
FATALITY. 

That  is  very  fine.     But  let  us  see  if  these 

1  We  sen    und   Zweck   der   Politik,   Leipsic,   Brockhaus, 
1893,  vol.  i,  p.  9. 


THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE    117 

grim  theories  can  hold  their  own  when  con- 
fronted with  facts. 

In  1865,  132  Welsh  disembarked  at  Golfo 
Nuevo  in  Patagonia.  They  set  to  work,  but 
the  crops  were  poor,  and  the  little  colony  came 
near  starving.  "  Fortunately,  on  their  first 
meeting  with  the  native  Indians,  the  Tehuel- 
Che,  they  had  entered  into  friendship  with 
them,  and  the  Indians  gave  them  food,  bring- 
ing them  game,  fish,  and  fruits  in  exchange 
for  some  small  articles  of  English  manufac- 
ture." 1  Can  one  imagine  two  more  dissim- 
ilar races  than  the  Celts  from  Wales  and  the 
Tehuel-Che  of  Patagonia?  And  I  ask  Mr. 
Ratzenhofer  how  it  is  that  upon  their  first 
meeting  the  two  races  did  not  throw  them- 
selves upon  one  another  and  fight  "  a  fight 
to  exterminate  "  ?  I  answer,  because  the  al- 
leged fatality  of  such  a  conflict  is  a  purely 
metaphysical  creation.  Every  living  being 
pursues  joy  and  not  struggle.  The  contact 
of  two  hordes  may  produce  the  most  dis- 

1E.  Reclus,  Nouvelle  geographic  universelle,  vol.  xix, 
P-  753. 


n8    THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE 

similar  results,  hostility  as  well  as  amity. 
That  depends  upon  the  interests  involved  and 
thousands  of  fortuitous  circumstances. 

If  I  were  not  afraid  of  wearying  the 
reader,  I  should  cite  facts  to  prove  that  on 
numerous  occasions  the  first  contact  of  two 
very  different  races  has  been  peaceful,  like 
that  of  the  Welsh  and  the  Tehuel-Che.  It 
could  not  be  otherwise.  If  the  theories  of 
Mr.  Gumplowicz  and  Mr.  Ratzenhofer  were 
true,  the  very  foundations  of  psychology 
would  be  overturned.  We  should  have  to 
concede  that  there  are  actions  unaccompanied 
by  volition.  When  man  attacks  a  creature  of 
his  own  or  of  a  different  kind,  he  always  does 
so  in  obedience  to  a  desire  to  acquire  some 
good  or  defend  himself  against  some  evil. 
But  the  "  fight  to  exterminate  "  of  two  hordes 
would  be  an  act  without  an  object,  therefore 
a  psychologic  impossibility.  The  mere  ap- 
pearance of  an  alien  does  not  always  consti- 
tute an  injury  in  itself.  Without  doubt 
misoneism,  the  tendency  to  consider  every- 
thing new  as  disagreeable,  is  undeniably  a 


THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE    119 

trait  of  human  beings.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  existence  of  philoneism,  the  very 
opposite  tendency,  is  also  not  to  be  denied. 
It,  too,  is  an  essential  trait.  Monotony  pro- 
duces boredom,  genuine  suffering.  The  cases 
in  which  foreigners  are  well  received  are  just 
as  numerous  as  those  in  which  they  are  not. 

That  is  why,  I  must  repeat,  the  contact  of 
two  social  groups  may  produce  the  most  un- 
like consequences,  alliance  as  well  as  conflict. 
No  grim  FATALITY  obliges  us  to  massacre 
one  another  eternally  like  wild  beasts.  All 
the  theories  based  on  that  alleged  fatality  are 
pure  phantasmagorias  absolutely  devoid  of 
all  positive  reality. 

At  this  point  I  must  bring  up  another 
error  which  has  been  the  cause  of  much  abuse 
lately — the  alleged  race  wars.  They,  too, 
are  mere  creations  of  the  fancy.  Until  now 
there  have  been  no  race  wars,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  the  races  have  not  been  conscious 
of  their  individuality.  When  the  wars  for 
political  domination  took  place  between  two 
linguistic  groups,  they  became  race  wars  by 


120    THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE 

chance.  The  Germans  did  not  fight  the  Slavs 
on  their  eastern  boundary  because  they  hated 
them,  but  in  order  to  acquire  territory  which 
they  coveted.1  The  French  made  conquests 
along  the  Rhine,  not  from  hatred  of  the  Ger- 
mans, but  to  increase  the  size  of  their  state. 
They  fought  the  Spaniards  for  the  same  pur- 
pose, though  the  Spaniards  like  themselves 
are  Latins. 

The  idea  of  nationality,  which  is  more  con- 
crete, is  of  very  recent  origin,  that  of  race  all 
the  more  so.  The  Slavs  have  had  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  unity  of  their  race  only  since 
the  works  of  Safarik  and  his  emulators,  that 
is,  for  only  about  sixty  years.  The  Swedes, 
the  Danes,  and  the  Germans  are  Teutons. 
That  has  not  prevented  them  from  fighting 
one  another  furiously,  and  it  did  not  impel 
them  to  adopt  common  institutions.  Noth- 
ing is  more  conventional  than  the  idea  of 
race.    Where  can  the  boundary  lines  between 

1  The  wars  Charlemagne  waged  against  the  Saxons  were 
just  as  cruel  as  the  wars  of  the  Germans  against  the 
Slavs.  Yet  Charlemagne  and  the  Saxons  both  belonged 
to  the  Teutonic  race. 


THE  THEORISTS  OF  BRUTE  FORCE    121 

races  be  drawn?  We  settle  them  arbitrarily 
from  purely  subjective  considerations.1  Hence, 
racial  differences  have  had  but  a  slight  influ- 
ence upon  political  history.  The  Arabs  and 
Spaniards,  it  would  seem,  formed  two  quite 
distinct  races  between  whom  an  alliance  was 
impossible.  Yet  what  do  we  find  in  fact? 
That  the  famous  Cid  Campeador,  Spain's  na- 
tional hero,  sometimes  allied  himself  with 
Mohammedan  emirs  and  fought  Christian 
princes.  The  object  of  the  wars  in  the  mid- 
dle ages  was  to  obtain  possession  of  as  much 
territory  as  possible,  and  until  the  present 
time  that  has  been  the  chief  cause  of  wars. 
I  challenge  any  one  to  cite  a  single  campaign 
consciously  undertaken  for  the  purpose  of  up- 
holding the  interests  of  a  race. 

1  If  the  physiologic  differences  that  divide  a  Frenchman 
from  a  German  constitute  the  limits  of  a  race,  why 
should  not  the  same  hold  for  the  physiologic  differences 
between  a  Norman  and  a  Provencal?  They  are  just  as 
great.  But  where  draw  the  line?  It  may  just  as  well 
be  said  that  the  Bavarians  and  the  Prussians  form  dif- 
ferent races.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  boundaries  do  not 
exist  in  nature,  but  are  pure  subjective  categories  of  our 
mind. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
ANTAGONISM  AND  SOLIDARITY 

Happily  the  theories  of  Mr.  Gumplowicz 
and  Mr.  Ratzenhofer  are  as  false  as  they  are 
unmerciful.  At  first  man  is  guided  by  no  in- 
comprehensible FATALITY,  but  simply  by 
his  interests.  Assuredly,  a  social  group  is 
not  impelled  to  go  massacre  another  social 
group  because  humanity  has  a  polygenist 
origin.  Little  care  I  who  my  ancestor  was  a 
thousand  generations  ago.  What  I  care 
about  is  to  have  the  maximum  of  enjoyment 
with  the  minimum  of  work. 

But  what  is  more,  the  authors  just  men- 
tioned have  entirely  neglected  another  side 
of  the  question.  They  have  seen  conflict 
alone;  they  have  not  seen,  or  have  not  laid 
stress    upon,    the    phenomenon    of    alliance. 

122 


ANTAGONISM  AND  SOLIDARITY    123 

What  sort  of  a  chemist  would  he  be  who 
merely  saw  the  forces  driving  chemical  bodies 
apart  and  failed  to  study  those  that  produce 
cohesion?  These  are  the  two  sides  of  the 
same  phenomenon.  The  atoms  cannot  dis- 
appear from  the  universe.  If  they  leave  one 
body,  they  must  necessarily  join  another. 
Chemistry  is  properly  the  science  of  atomic 
composites.  The  same  is  true  of  communi- 
ties. Conflict  and  alliance  are  two  simulta- 
neous and  parallel  phenomena  characterizing 
social  groups.  u  Let  several  murderers," 
says  Mr.  Lacombe,  "  who  have  decided  to 
war  upon  society  unite  and  form  a  union  of 
their  own,  there  will  soon  be  an  expressed 
[or  tacit]  agreement  among  them  not  to 
kill  one  another." *  In  order  that  one 
social  group  may  undertake  a  fight  against 
another,  an  alliance  among  the  unities  of 
which  it  is  composed  must  necessarily  be 
established. 

Mr.  Gumplowicz  well  knows  that  in  the 
Quaternary  Age  hordes  of  several  hundreds 

1  De  I'histoire  consideree  comme  science,  p.  77. 


124     ANTAGONISM  AND  SOLIDARITY 

of  persons  composed  the  social  group  and 
fought  against  similar  groups.  In  1870, 
38,000,000  Frenchmen  fought  an  equal  num- 
ber of  Germans.  If  the  hordes  had  always 
11  thrown  themselves  upon  one  another  in  a 
fight  to  exterminate, "  or  if  they  had  always 
11  avoided  contact,"  how  could  such  immense 
associations  as  that  ever  have  been  organ- 
ized? In  fact,  the  alliances  among  hordes, 
tribes,  cities,  and  states  have  been  just  as  nu- 
merous and  frequent  as  conflicts.  Always, 
when  hostilities  begin,  allies  are  sought.  His- 
tory mentions  as  many  coalitions  of  states 
as  wars  against  them.  To-day  Europe  is  di- 
vided into  two  camps — the  triple  alliance 
forming  the  one,  France  and  Russia  the 
other.  Here,  too,  then,  we  see  alliance  go- 
ing hand  in  hand  with  antagonism.  More- 
over, how  is  it  that  Mr.  Gumplowicz  does 
not  see  that  association  has  no  limits?  Noth- 
ing would  prevent  1,480,000,000  men  in- 
habiting 135,000,000  square  kilometres  from 
forming  an  alliance  to-morrow,  just  as  noth- 
ing prevented  381,000,000  men   inhabiting 


ANTAGONISM  AND  SOLIDARITY    125 

25,000,000  square  kilometres  from  forming 
one  to-day.1 

The  Darwinian  law  in  no  wise  prevents 
the  whole  of  humanity  from  joining  in  a  fed- 
eration in  which  peace  will  reign. 

But,  you  will  say,  how  reconcile  that  with 
the  perpetual  struggle  which  is  the  universal 
law  of  nature?  The  answer  is  simple.  You 
need  merely  recollect  that  massacre  is  not  the 
sole  form  in  which  struggle  manifests  itself. 
Within  the  federation  of  humanity  the  same 
will  take  place  as  takes  place  within  each 
state.  Here  struggle  has  by  no  means  dis- 
appeared, but  goes  on  under  the  form  of  eco- 
nomic competition,  lawyers'  briefs,  judges' 
sentences,  votes,  party  organizations,  parlia- 
mentary discussions,  meetings,  lectures,  ser- 
mons, schools,  scientific  associations,  con- 
gresses, pamphlets,  books,  newspapers,  maga- 
zines, in  short,  by  spoken  and  written  propa- 
ganda.   And  we  must  not  suppose  that  these 


aThe  first  pair  of  numbers  represent  all  the  inhabitants 
of  the  globe  and  the  extent  of  all  the  continents.  The 
second,  the  population  and  the  size  of  the  British  Empire. 


126     ANTAGONISM  AND  SOLIDARITY 

methods  have  been  preferred  to  bloodshed 
because  men  have  become  better.  Idylls 
play  no  part  in  this  question.  These  methods 
have  been  preferred  simply  because  they  were 
found  to  be  the  most  effective,  therefore  the 
quickest  and  easiest.  "  We  shall  not  give 
you  the  satisfaction  of  shooting  us  down 
in  the  street,"  Liebknecht  once  said  to 
Count  Caprivi.  If  the  Socialists  prefer  the 
vote  as  a  fighting  weapon,  that  is  most 
certainly  not  from  love  of  the  conserva- 
tives. 

All  the  methods  of  struggle  just  enumer- 
ated are  constantly  employed  in  normal  times 
among  381,000,000  of  English  subjects  in- 
habiting 25,000,000  of  square  kilometres. 
They  could  be  equally  well  employed  by 
1,480,000,000  men  inhabiting  135,000,000 
square  kilometres.  Then  the  federation  of 
the  entire  globe  would  be  achieved. 

Why  do  we  say  that  the  French  form  a 
political  unity?  Simply  because  in  normal 
conditions  they  do  not  war  with  one  another. 
But  does  that  mean  that  they  have  given  up 


ANTAGONISM  AND  SOLIDARITY    127 

the  other  methods  of  struggle  I  mentioned? 
Not  at  all.  The  synthesis  of  antagonism  and 
solidarity  is  produced  in  the  simplest  fashion 
in  the  world  once  people  decide  to  cross  the 
asses'  bridge  and  consciously  decide  to  under- 
stand what  language  has  already  formulated 
a  thousand  times :  struggles  are  carried  on  by 
most  dissimilar  methods.  In  short,  economic, 
political,  and  intellectual  competition  will 
never  cease  among  men.  Hence  antagonism 
will  always  exist,  but  as  soon  as  men  stop 
butchering  one  another  solidarity  among  them 
will  be  established. 

The  coexistence  of  antagonism  and  soli- 
darity may  be  observed  in  all  human  groups. 
Children  in  a  class,  for  instance,  vie  with  one 
another  for  the  place  at  the  head  of  the  class, 
but  they  have  a  feeling  of  solidarity,  and  let 
a  difference  with  another  class  arise,  and  they 
will  act  as  a  unit.  Let  the  Chinese  arm  36,- 
000,000     soldiers  *     to-morrow     to    destroy 

1The  number  of  armed  Europeans  serving  in  regiments 
is  about  one  to  every  ioo  inhabitants.  If  China  were  as 
well  organized  from  a  military  point  of  view,  she  could 
send  this  number  of  men  to  the  field. 


128     ANTAGONISM  AND  SOLIDARITY 

Occidental  civilization,  and  the  Germans, 
French,  English,  Italians,  and  Russians,  so 
widely  separated  to-day,  would  immediately 
form  an  alliance  and  make  common  cause. 

Mr.  Gumplowicz  and  the  other  apologists 
of  bloodshed  commit  a  further  mistake.  They 
are  extremely  shortsighted.  They  fancy  that 
man's  one  enemy  is  man.  That  is  not  so. 
Man  has  other  infinitely  more  dangerous  and 
cruder  enemies.  These  are  climatic  condi- 
tions and  certain  animal  and  vegetable  spe- 
cies. How  many  millions  of  our  fellow-men 
are  carried  off  annually  by  the  microbe 
of  tuberculosis,  not  to  mention  the  microbes 
of  cholera  and  the  bubonic  plague!  The 
phylloxera  has  cost  France  more  than  the 
five  milliards  of  the  Prussian  indemnity.  In- 
numerable parasites  attack  our  crops  and 
cause  thousands  of  men  to  die  of  hunger  and 
poverty.  In  addition,  how  much  suffering  do 
not  the  cold  of  our  climate  and  the  heat  of 
the  tropics  cause  ?  Count  up  the  many,  many 
victims  of  those  two  agents  alone,  not  to 
speak  of  storms,  hail,  floods,  and  droughts. 


ANTAGONISM  AND  SOLIDARITY    129 

The     unfortunates    who     die     from     those 
scourges  number  millions. 

A  common  enemy  produces  allies.  The 
Germans  fought  one  another  in  1866.  Four 
years  later  they  united  against  the  common 
enemy,  the  French.  Europe  so  profoundly 
divided  would  be  united  against  China.  When 
we  shall  cease  to  be  blinder  than  moles,  we 
shall  understand  the  elementary  truth  that 
the  questions  dividing  the  civilized  nations 
are  mere  bagatelles,  bits  of  folly  and  pu- 
erility. To  shed  torrents  of  blood  for  the 
possession  of  a  province  is  an  act  of  child- 
ishness. Our  awfulest  enemies,  the  elements 
and  germs  and  insect  destroyers,  attack  us 
every  minute  without  cease,  yet  we  murder 
one  another  as  if  we  were  out  of  our  senses. 
Death  is  ever  on  the  watch  for  us,  and  we 
think  of  nothing  but  to  snatch  a  few  patches 
of  land!  About  5,000,000,000  days  of  work 
go  every  year  to  the  displacement  of  bound- 
ary lines.  Think  of  what  humanity  could 
obtain  if  that  prodigious  effort  were  devoted 
to  fighting  our  real  enemies,  the  noxious  spe- 


130     ANTAGONISM  AND  SOLIDARITY 

cies  and  our  hostile  environment.  We  should 
conquer  them  in  a  few  years.  The  entire 
globe  would  turn  into  a  model  farm.  Every 
plant  would  grow  for  our  use.  The  savage 
animals  would  disappear,  and  the  infinitely 
tiny  animals  would  be  reduced  to  impotence 
by  hygiene  and  cleanliness.  The  earth  would 
be  conducted  according  to  our  convenience. 
In  short,  the  day  men  realize  who  their  worst 
enemies  are,  they  will  form  an  alliance 
against  them,  they  will  cease  to  murder  one 
another  like  wild  beasts  from  sheer  folly. 
Then  they  will  be  the  true  rulers  of  the 
planet,  the  lords  of  creation. 

Of  old,  man  was  the  game  hunted  by  man. 
In  our  modern  states,  immense  communities 
of  mutual  spoliation,  man  is  more  frequently 
the  slave  of  man.  We  shall  attain  the  cul- 
mination of  prosperity  realizable  here  below 
when  man  becomes  the  ally  of  man. 

THE  END 


HAZEN'S  EUROPE  SINCE   1815 

By  Chables  Downer  Hazen,  Professor  in  Smith  College. 
"With  fourteen  colored  maps.  (In  American  Historical  Series 
edited  by  Prof.  Haskins  of  Harvard.)    xv+830  pp.      13.00  net. 

A  clear  and  concise  account  of  European  history  from 
Waterloo  to  such  recent  matters  as  the  Dreyfus  Trial,  church 
disestablishment  in  France,  and  the  various  Russian  Dumas. 

The  author  has  paid  fully  as  much  attention  to  economic 
and  social  as  to  military  matters,  and  has  simplified  his  narrative 
by  considering  one  country  at  a  time  for  considerable  periods. 
Europe's  relations  to  her  Colonies  and  to  the  United  States  are 
also  considered.  There  is  a  full  bibliography  of  general  works 
and  of  those  bearing  on  each  chapter  and  a  full  index. 

"A  clear,  comprehensive  and  impartial  record  of  the  bewildering 
changes  in  Europe.  .  .  .  Illuminatingly  clear.  .  .  .  High  praise  for 
the  execution  of  a  difficult  historical  task  must  be  accorded  him." — New 
York  Sun. 

"The  meaning  and  effects  of  the  revolutionary  movements  in  the 
different  countries  of  Europe,  .  .  .  are  clearly  set  forth.  ,  .  .  The 
author  .  .  .  manages  his  materials  well,  and  we  think  he  has  managed 
to  get  into  his  volume  the  most  important  events  of  the  century.  He  cer- 
tainly has  succeeded  in  making  the  story  of  Europe  both  clear  and  interest- 
ing, and  he  brings  together  in  the  closing  chapter  the  influence  of  the  past 
eighty-five  years  upon  modern  progress.  The  period  he  covers  is  practically 
contemporary  history,  and  it  is  rather  difficult  to  get  contemporary  history 
written  as  briefly  as  the  history  of  the  past,  but  it  must  be  said  that  the 
author  excels  in  condensation,  clearness  and  interest."— Boston  Transcript. 

FOURNIER'S   NAPOLEON  THE   FIRST 

Translated  by  Margaret  B.  Cor  win  and  Arthur  D.  Bis- 
bell,  edited  by  Prof.  E.  G.  Bourne  of  Yale.  With  a  full 
critical  and  topical  bibliography.     750  pages,  12mo,  $2.00  net. 

"  Excellent    .    .    .    Courtesy  probably  makes  the  editor  place  it  after 

the  works  of and .    .    .    there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the 

superiority  as  a  history  of  Fournier's  book."— New  York  Sun. 

"  An  authoritative  biography  .  .  .  admirably  adapted  to  American 
needs  and  tastes." — Times'  Saturday  Review. 

"This  notable  biography  .  .  .  The  work  of  translation  has  been 
accomplished  in  a  very  satisfactory  manner." — Springfield  Republican. 

'*  One  of  the  best  of  the  single  volume  biographies  and  its  value  is  greatly 
enhanced  by  the  exhaustive  bibliography  which  is  appended." — Dial, 

HENRY    HOLT    AND    COMPANY 

84  West  33rd  Street  New  York 

(ix'10) 


ALGERNON  BLACKWOOD'S 
THE  EDUCATION  OF  UNCLE  PAUL 

By  the  author  of  "John  Silence."    i2mo. 

How  Uncle  Paul,  a  bachelor  of  forty-five,  returns  to  England 
after  years  spent  in  the  Canadian  woods.  How  his  nephews  and 
nieces  taught  him  many  things,  and  Nixie  led  him  to  "the  crack 
between  yesterday  and  to-morrow,"  a  book  full  of  sympathy 
with  Nature,  poetic  feeling,  and  a  cheery  optimism.  One  of 
the  best-known  American  critics  who  saw  the  advance  sheets 
writes,  "  There  is  a  mixture  of  Wordsworth's  '  Ode  '  and  *  Peter 
Pan*  in  the  book." 

The  Spectator  (London):  "  Marked  by  a  sense  of  beauty  and  a  wealth  of 
poetic  inveiAion.  .  .  .  Under  Uncle  Paul  s  burly  exterior  there  is  the  mind  of  a 
mystic,  a  student  of  Blake,  and  a  nature-worshipper.  .  .  .  Uncle  Paul,  fearful 
of  being  misunderstood,  plays  the  part  of  the  elderly  uncle.  .  .  .  But  the 
children  .  .  .  penetrate  his  self-protective  armour.  .  .  .  Nixie,  who  in- 
herits her  strange  gifts  from  her  father,  a  poet  and  visionary,  is  the  high  priest- 
ess of  these  blameless  mysteries,  and  under  her  guidance  Uncle  Paul,  her 
little  brother  and  sister,  and  their  pet  dogs  and  cats,  escape  .to  the  heart  of 
cloudland,  to  the  birthplace  of  the  winds,  and  to  other  wonderful  enchanted 
regions  where  time  is  not  and  joy  is  unceasing.  .  .  .  There  is  humour,  too, 
in  the  way  in  which  Uncle  Paul  leads  his  double  life  ...  an  uncommon 
book.  Mr.  Blackwood  specialises  in  recondite  experiences  and  emotions,  but 
he  can  draw  ordinary  people  with  a  sure  hand,  and  he  has  an  extraordinarily 
acute  appreciation  of  the  mystery,  the  affectation,  and  the  aloofness  of  cats. 
We  are  not  at  all  sure  that '  Mrs.  Tompkyns  '  is  not  the  most  wonderful  person 
in  the  book." 


SARAH  M.  H.  GARDNER'S   QUAKER  IDYLS 

Enlarged  Edition.     i6mo,  $1.00  net. 

Original,  sometimes  pathetic,  and  often  humorous  character 
sketches. 

These  little  tales  portray  The  Friends  in  all  their  purity  and 
simplicity. 

The  present  edition  is  the  sixth.  The  titles  of  the  earlier 
idyls  are:  "Twelfth  Street  Meeting,"  "A  Quaker  Wedding," 
"  Two  Gentlewomen,"  "  Our  Little  Neighbors,"  "  Pamelia  Tewks- 
bury's  Courtship,"  "Some  Antebellum  Letters  from  a  Quaker 
Girl,"  "Uncle  Joseph,"  and  "My  Grandame's  Secret." 

The  new  idyls  are  called :  *A  Homely  Tragedy "  and  "  An 
Unconscious  Disciple  of  Thespis." 


***  If  the  reader  will  send  his  name  and  address,  the  publishers  will  send,  from 
time  to  time,  information  regarding  their  new  books. 

HENRY      HOLT     AND      COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


BOOKS   ON   RAILROADS 

By  LOGAN  G.  McPHERSON,  Lecturer  on  Transportation  at  Johns  Hopkins 

TRANSPORTATION  IN  EUROPE 

A  rearrangement  and  amplification  of  the  author's  re- 
ports to  the  National  Waterways  Commission.  i2mo.  $1.50 
net;  by  mail,  $1.63. 

"  It  is  always  difficult  to  compare  the  transportation  problems  of  Europe 
with  those  of  America  because  of  the  different  conditions  which  surround 
them.  .  .  .  He  has  performed  this  task  most  excellently,  and  in  doing  so 
has  produced  a  valuable  and  interesting  addition  to  railway  literature.  His 
history  of  the  growth  of  transportation  by  rail  and  by  water,  and  his  analy- 
sis of  the  reasons  why  the  canals  in  Europe  continue  in  service  despite  their 
economic  obsolescence,  is  timely  and  enlightening  in  view  of  the  proposi- 
tion to  spend  large  sums  upon  the  waterways  of  the  American  continent. 
It  is  not  often  that  such  a  work  of  an  American  upon  European  affairs  can 
command  even  the  attention  of  the  critics  of  the  latter  continent,  but  Mr. 
McPherson  has  not  only  done  this  but  has  received  high  praise  from  such 
authorities  as  Dr.  Von  der  Leyen,  chief  councilor  of  the  German  railways. 
This  was  given  not  because  Mr.  McPherson  has  praised  European  methods, 
for  he  has  not  hesitated  to  criticise,  but  because  of  the  thoroughness  of  his 
work  and  the  fairness  of  his  statements.  Should  be  read  by  every  student  of 
transportation  problems  in  America."—  Official  Railway  Guide. 

RAILROAD  FREIGHT  RATES 

In  Their  Relation  to  the  Industry  and  Commerce  of  the 
United  States.  With  maps,  tables,  and  a  full  index.  8vo. 
$2.25   net ;   by  mail,  $2.42. 

"  An  exceedingly  important  book.  .  .  .  Not  only  the  best  existing 
account,  but  it  is  easily  the  best  book  on  American  railway  traffic. 
.  .  .  We  have  little  hesitation  in  expressing  the  opinion  that  it  will 
stand  as  the  standard  reference  work  for  a  good  many  3'ears.  .  .  . 
The  country  would  be  better  governed  if  the  legislator,  state  and 
national,  had  to  pass  an  examination  upon  it  before  taking  his  oath  of 
office." — Railroad  Age  Gazette. 

THE  WORKING  OF  THE   RAILROADS 

i2mo.    $1.50  net;  by  mail,  $1.63. 

"  Simply  and  lucidly  tells  what  a  railroad  company  is,  what  it  does, 
and  how  it  does  it.  Cannot  fail  to  be  of  use  to  the  voter.  Of  exceed- 
ing value  to  the  young  and  ambitious  in  railroad  service." — The 
Travelers'  Official  Railway  Guide. 

"  The  most  important  contribution  to  its  branch  of  the  subject 
that  has  yet  been  made." — The  Dial. 


By   CHARLES   FREDERICK    CARTER 
WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

With  an  Introductory  Note  by  Logan  G.  McPherson.   16  full- 
page   illustrations.     8vo.     312  pp.    $2.00  net;  by  mail,  $2.16. 

^ "  Full  of  interest.  Besides  the  general  chapter  on  the  beginnings,  it 
gives  the  early  history  of  the  Erie,  the  Pennsylvania,  and  the  Balti- 
more and  Ohio,  of  the  Vanderbilt  lines,  the  first  Pacific  railroad,  and 
of  the  Canadian  Pacific.     Very  readable." — New  York  Sun. 

HENRY     HOLT     AND     COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


Hmerican  public  problems  Series 

Edited  by  Ralph  Curtis  Ringwalt 

Chinese  Immigration 

By  Mary  Roberts  Coolidge,  Formerly  Associate  Professor 
of  Sociology  in  Stanford  University.  531  pp.,  $1.75  net;  by 
mail,  $1.90.     {Just  issued.) 

Presents  the  most  comprehensive  record  of  the  Chinaman  in 
the  United  States  that  has  yet  been  attempted. 

44  Scholarly.     Covers  every  important  phase,  economic,  social,  and 

Eolitical,  of  the  Chinese  question  in  America  down  to  the  San  Francisco 
re  in  1906."— New  York  Sun. 

44  Statesmanlike.    Of  intense  interest."— Hartford  Courant. 

44  A  remarkably  thorough  historical  study.  Timely  and  useful.  En- 
hanced by  the  abundant  array  of  documentary  facts  and  evidence." — 
Chicago  Record- Herald. 

Immigration:  And   Its  Effects   Upon  the  United 

States 

By  Prescott  F.  Hall,  A.B.,  LL.B,  Secretary  of  the  Immi- 
gration Restriction  League.   393  pp.   $1.50  net;  by  mail,  $1.65. 

44  Should  prove  interesting  to  everyone.  Very  readable,  forceful  and 
convincing.  Mr.  Hall  considers  every  possible  phase  of  this  great 
question  and  does  it  in  a  masterly  way  that  shows  not  only  that  he 
thoroughly  understands  it,  but  that  he  is  deeply  interested  in  it  and  has 
studied  everything  bearing  upon  it." — Boston  Transcript. 

44  A  readable  work  containing  a  vast  amount  of  valuable  information. 
Especially  to  be  commended  is  the  discussion  of  the  racial  effects.  As  a 
trustworthy  general  guide  it  should  prove  a  god-send." — New  York 
Evening  Post. 

The  Election  of  Senators 

By  Professor  George  H.  Haynes,  Author  of  u  Representation 
in  State  Legislatures."    300  pp.    $1.50  net;  by  mail,  $1.65. 

Shows  the  historical  reasons  for  the  present  method,  and 

its  effect  on  the  Senate  and  Senators,  and  on  state  and  local 

government,  with  a  detailed  review  of  the  arguments  for  and 

against  direct  election. 

44  A  timely  book.  .  .  .  Prof.  Haynes  is  qualified  for  a  historical  and 
analytical  treatise  on  the  subject  of  the  Senate. "  —New  York  Evening  Sun. 

HENRY     HOLT     AND     COMPANY 

84  WEST  33d  STREET  NEW  YORK 


FIFTY  YEARS  OF  DARWINISM 

Comprising  the  eleven  addresses  in  honor  of  Charles  Darwin 

delivered  January,  1909,  before  the  American  Association 

for  the  Advancement  of  Science.    $2.00  net;  by  mail  $2.16. 

Contents: — Introduction,  T.  C.  Chamberlin;  Fifty  Years  of  Darwin- 
ism, E.  B.  Poulton;  The  Theory  of  Natural  Selection  from  the  Stand- 
point of  Botany,  J.  M.  Coulter;  Isolation  as  a  Factor  in  Organic 
Evolution,  D.  S.  Jordan;  The  Cell  in  Relation  to  Heredity  and  Evo- 
lution, E.  B.  Wilson;  The  Direct  Influence  of  Environment,  D.  T. 
MacDougal;  The  Behavior  of  Unit-Characters  in  Heredity,  W.  E. 
Castle;  Mutation,  C.  B.  Davenport;  Adaptation,  C.  H.  Eigenmann; 
Darwin  and  Paleontology,  H.  F.  Osborn;  Evolution  and  Psychology, 
G.  Stanley  Hall. 

KELLOGG'S  DARWINISM  TO-DAY 

By  Vernon  L.   Kellogg,  Professor  in   Stanford  University. 

$2.00  net;  by  mail  $2.16. 

A  simple  and  concise  discussion  for  the  educated  layman  of  present- 
day  scientific  criticism  of  the  Darwinian  selection  theories,  together 
with  concise  accounts  of  the  other  more  important  proposed  auxiliary 
and  alternative  theories  of  species-forming. 

Its  value  cannot  be  over-estimated.  A  book  the  student  must  have 
at  hand  at  all  times,  and  it  takes  the  place  of  a  whole  library.  No 
other  writer  has  attempted  to  gather  together  the  scattered  literature 
of  this  vast  subject,  and  none  has  subjected  this  literature  to  such 
uniformly  trenchant  and  uniformly  kindly  criticism.  An  investigator 
of  the  first  rank,  and  master  of  a  clear  and  forceful  literary  style. — 
'President  D.  S.  Jordan  in  the  Dial. 


LOCY'S  BIOLOGY  AND  ITS  MAKERS 

By  William  A.  Locy,  Professor  in  Northwestern  University. 
$2.75  net;  by  mail  $2.88. 

An  untechnical  account  of  the  rise  and  progress  of  biology;  written 
around  the  lives  of  the  great  leaders,  with  bibliography  and  index. 
The  123  illustrations  include  portraits,  many  of  them  rare,  of  nearly 
all  the  founders  of  biology.  The  book  is  divided  into  two  parts, 
Part  I  dealing  with  the  sources  of  biological  ideas  except  those  of 
Organic  Evolution,  and  Part  II  devoting  itself  wholly  to  Evolution.' 

It  is  entertainingly  written,  and  better  than  any  other  existing  single 
work  in  any  language,  gives  the  layman  a  clear  idea  of  the  scope 
and  development  of  the  broad  science  of  biology.— Dial. 


HENRY     HOLT     AND     COMPANY 

34  WEST  33D  STREET  NEW  YORK 


FOR    TRAVELERS 

IN  AND  OUT  OF  FLORENCE 

By  Max  Vernon.    With    48    full-page   illustrations  from 

photographs  and  about  100  drawings  by  Maud  Lanktree. 

370  pp.     With  index.     8vo.    $2.50  net;  by  mail  $2.67. 

A  reliable  tho  delightfully  informal  book  liable  to  prove  as  attractive 
to  fireside  travelers  as  to  those  who  actually  cross  the  sea.  Besides 
covering  Florence's  art  treasures  and  the  sights  of  interest  to  tourists, 
including  the  delightful  excursions  to  Vallambrosa,  and  over  the  Con- 
suma  Pass,  the  Casentino,  Prato,  Pistoja,  Lucca  and  Pisa,  the  author 
treats  of  such  practical  matters  as  House-hunting,  Servants,  Shopping, 
etc. 

FRENCH  CATHEDRALS  AND  CHATEAUX 

By  Clara  Crawford  Perkins.  Two  volumes,  with  photo- 
gravure frontispieces  and  62  half-tone  plates.  8vo.  $5.00  net, 
boxed,  carriage  extra. 

Covers    the    cathedrals,    palaces,    and    chateaux    around 

which  so  much  of  history  and  romance  has  gathered. 

"A  most  valuable  work.  A  more  complete  study  of  the  architecture, 
or  clever  scheme  of  giving  lucid  pictures  of  its  history  could  not  be 
desired." — The  Reader. 

11  Of  genuine  artistic  value.    Notable  for  its  excellent  arrangement." 

—Boston  Herald. 

THE  BUILDERS  OF  SPAIN 

Two  volumes,  with  two  photogravure  frontispieces  and  62 
half-tone  plates.     8vo.     $5.00  net,  boxed,  carriage  extra. 

A  sumptuous  and  popular  work  similar  to  "  French  Cathe- 
drals and  Chateaux "  in  scope,  appearance,  and  careful 
arrangement. 

M  A  very  delightful  book."— Baltimore  Sun. 

44  It  is  a  pleasure  to  take  up  a  beautiful  book'and  find  that  the  subject- 
matter  is  quite  as  satisfactory  as  the  artistic  illustrations,  the  rich 
covers  and  the  clear  print."— Springfield  Republican. 

POEMS  FOR  TRAVELERS 

Compiled  by  Mary  R.J.  DuBois.  i6mo.  Cloth,  $1.50; 
leather,  $2.50. 

THE  POETIC  OLD-WORLD 
THE  POETIC  NEW- WORLD 

Compiled  by  Miss  L.  H.  Humphrey.  i6mo.  Cloth,  $1.50 
each  ;  leather,  $2.50  each. 


HENRY     HOLT     AND     COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


OCT  28  194 


2.TV 


NOV  171947 


AY     8  1948 


31AM9'/5C 


C  27  195U 


*0  i 


5Jan54flD 
W.&4EB  5      1954^ 


>4^LU 

280ct'55«rr 


WT2  219551M 

-100m-12,'46(A2012si6)4120 


25Apr'5.FW 
^PR111956L0 

REC'D  LD 

HAY  1 3 19? 

REC'D  LD 

JUL  8    I960 

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•       280d'6Sff- 


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$£75871 


V/ 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


